Impossible: The Case Against Lee Harvey Oswald
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To prove that studying the Kennedy assassination will test your ability to distinguish reality from illusion, we will explore a few examples.
Let’s start with the arrangement of boxes where Oswald was supposedly situated. According to the Warren Commission (the first major government investigation of the Kennedy affair in 1964, followed by the second, the House Select Committee On Assassinations in 1979), only one of the photographs below represents the original position of the boxes at the “sniper’s nest,” the position they were in after the assassin (if indeed the assassin was located at that position) left the scene.
But which one?
These photographs are evidence in The Case Against Oswald, Warren Commission Exhibit 733 on the left, and 509, on the right. (Note: Exhibit 733 can be found in Volume 17 of the Warren Commission Hearings, at page 509, which will be cited as 17 H 509. Exhibit 509 is found at 17 H 220. These exhibits can be viewed at http://www.historymatters.com/jfkmurder.htm and http://www.maryferrell.org.) Now, you can immediately see that we’ve got ourselves a real problem here!
A compare and contrast between the photographs, which any third-grader familiar with similar exercises found in Highlights should easily be able to do, results in a series of questions.
To prove any third-grader can do it, we can divide these questions into roughly 2 types named in honor of the two main rivals for Darla’s affection in the old Our Gang series, rivals who now have decided to stop squabbling and join forces. From this corner emerges Alfalfa, the straight-up earnest cow-licked boy lifted straight out of a Norman Rockwell painting . . .
. . . and from this corner, Butch, the snarling pugilist:
“Alfalfa” questions, just like their namesake, are polite and proper like questions should be, but “Butch” questions, by contrast, are rude and in-your-face in the best Gordon Ramsay style.
These archetypes firmly in mind, Alfalfa comes out swinging with his queries about the incompatible box feng shui:
Why are these boxes in different positions?
Did anyone at the Warren Commission notice?
If they did notice, did the Warren Commission not think that we would notice that these boxes were in different positions — and then start wondering why?
Not to be outdone, Butch chimes in with his point of view:
Are you kidding me?
Alfalfa adds some fast jabs:
Which of these two photographs, if either, represents the original position of the boxes at the so-called “sniper’s nest?”
If we are told that the position of the boxes in Exhibit 733 is the one which represents the way the boxes were originally positioned, how come there is an alternate photo?
Boxes don’t move themselves — someone obviously moved them. Who moved them? When did they move them? Why did they move them?
And even more Alfalfa flurries:
If I am told that the position of the boxes in Exhibit 733 represents the original position, how do I know that I’m being told the truth?
How can anyone prove that this is the original position? If it is not, doesn’t this affect any analysis related to trajectories and the ability of the assassin to make his shot?
In any event, doesn’t the movement of boxes violate everything we have been told about maintaining the integrity of the crime scene?
But of course, as always, we can rely on Butch to go straight to the point:
Hey, what is this, a con job?
That Butch . . . you gotta love him!
And there are many other questions, which you could easily formulate given the time.
But before you can get to those questions, defenders of the Warren Commission will always come back at you with answers, exposing you to the First Law Of Kennedy Assassination Motion:
For every bizarre contradiction there is an equal and opposite “innocent explanation.”
And what is the innocent explanation in this case?
“Tut, tut, my man, ‘tis no problem at all. The Warren Commission never tried to pass off CE 509 (also known as Studebaker Exhibit D) as a photo depicting the Sniper’s Nest boxes as they were first found by the police. Nor did they attempt to pass off CE 733 as a photograph of the boxes in their original position.
Quite the contrary, in fact. The Commission has testimony that CE 509 was a picture that was taken after boxes were moved for fingerprints before photographs were taken, and that CE 733 was a ‘reconstruction’ of the original position, and neither photo represented the configuration of the boxes in their exact position when they were first discovered by police. It's all very innocent, my good man.”
And yet, like the mythological Hydra, the “innocent explanations” you get just lead to even more Alfalfa queries:
You mean, in the murder of the century, we do not have an original photographic record of the crime scene!!??
You say this innocent explanation is true, but how are we to know that?
Why did the Dallas Police Department feel it was necessary to photograph the boxes in different positions after they had been dusted and moved around?
How does this comport with crime scene protocol at the time?
Why wasn't the photograph taken before the fingerprinting was done?
Is there another, more sinister explanation that the innocent explanation hides?
And if you happen to get more innocent explanations in reply, if you're lucky enough to get a reply, you are just going to have to go back to the well again to dredge up more questions. Instantly you can see that this is no ordinary case!
But this is only the beginning, trust me. There will be seemingly no end to the eye-popping question-inspiring multiple descriptions of reality in the historical record we will have to choose from, as we will continually be confronted with gaps between the representations of reality and the reality represented (that’s a fancy way of saying we are being lied to).
But who is doing the lying? It’s that old Invasion Of The Body Snatchers conundrum: is your best friend a person or a pod? There’s no choice in the matter, we have to decide.
Consider these competing versions of the so-called single-bullet path (the image on the left is from Jim Marrs’ Crossfire. The image on the right is from page 189 of the second volume of the House Select Committee On Assassinations Appendix, which will be cited as 2 HSCA 189, JFK Exhibit F-145):
Zig-zag vs. straight-line. Both of these views can’t be correct, of course.
Now, your first inclination, when you see these two drawings, is to attempt to determine their respective legitimacy by asking yourself which of the two (purporting to describe reality) conforms to your prior knowledge. Of course, we all are familiar with the laws of physics, at least intuitively. We know that bullets that travel in a straight line on a downward path don’t immediately shoot upward, and then, a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a second later, immediately reverse course. From the laws of physics perspective, you can completely rule out the drawing on the left, which illustrates not the laws, but the loss of physics. That leaves you with the drawing on the right, which, of these two, is the only possible one which could be true.
But the question now is, which of these drawings best describes the state of the evidence gathered by the Warren Commission? If the answer is the drawing on the left, then you can instantly see that the evidence the Warren Commission claims to be legitimate cannot possibly be true, or the conclusion derived from that evidence cannot possibly be true — or both.
As it turns out (and as you will find out), the evidence gathered supports neither of these images, which leads us right back to square one: if we were going to draw a picture of the reality (if indeed it was reality) of the single-bullet path based on the best evidence, what would it look like?
This question has very deep ramifications, and leads to other questions: What is the data we need to draw this picture? Do we need more data? Or should we simply analyze the data we have and draw the conclusions which most naturally flow? And if we should j
ust analyze the data we have, whose version of the data is dispositive?
As you might expect, there are multiple versions of what “the data” is. According to prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi (writing in the book Reclaiming History), the data partially consists of five reasons that one should have more faith in the image on the right we previously saw (and that therefore one should ignore the obvious evidence in the Zapruder film which on its face indicates that that image is flawed in what may be more ways than one). Bugliosi’s dataset is as follows (Reclaiming History pp. 458-64 [hereinafter to be cited as RH 458-64]):
The alignment of Kennedy and Connally’s bodies to each other at the time the shot was fired is consistent with the single-bullet theory.
No physical evidence supports a second gunman.
The entrance wound in Governor Connally’s back was not circular, but oval.
The bullet alleged to have traversed the bodies of both Kennedy and Connally, Warren Commission Exhibit 399, was fired from Oswald’s rifle.
No separate bullet was available to hit Connally.
The validity of the foregoing statements, obviously, will be discussed extensively later on in this book. However, one might argue provisionally that this is molehill data on which to base such a mountainous conclusion, particularly since the conclusions inherent in the statements are not necessarily consistent with the evidence. Yet note the Mount Everest conclusion Bugliosi tells us emerges from this molehill data (RH 464-65; emphasis supplied):
Each of the above five reasons, alone and by themselves, proves the single-bullet theory independent of the Zapruder film. (I would defy any conspiracy theorist to come up with even one — much less five — logical arguments that are independent of the Zapruder film and support the proposition that Kennedy and Connally were hit by separate bullets.) All five of these reasons, when taken together, prove the proposition that Connally was hit by the same bullet that hit Kennedy not just beyond all reasonable doubt, but beyond all possible doubt. Therefore, the film itself cannot, by definition, show something else. As I said earlier, any interpretation of the film that contravenes the single-bullet theory either must be a misinterpretation by the person analyzing the film, or is explainable in some other way.
Quite a compelling proclamation, even from a prosecutor who gives numerous indications in this paragraph that he never met a hyperbole he didn’t like. Unfortunately for Bugliosi’s overly-optimistic summary, there actually is another way to describe the single-bullet theory which on its face trumps Bugliosi’s five reasons, a description which encompasses far more of the physical evidence unearthed (as will be seen, Bugliosi’s summary suffers from an invisible factectomy). George Evica takes on Bugliosi’s challenge to come up with more than one logical argument to support the proposition that Kennedy and Connally were hit by separate bullets, in his brilliant reductio ad absurdum of the Single-Bullet Theory (And We Are All Mortal, p. ix):
Though such a theory was not necessary to the Commission’s case (except that in its absence conspiracy was certain), the Report argued it could have happened. A single-bullet could have caused Kennedy’s back of the neck wound (somehow moved up six inches from its observed location), continued through his neck (at a rather acute angle to the horizontal plane of the limousine despite the fact the round was allegedly fired from a sixth-floor window at an original angle of about 45 degrees) and, striking no bones, exited from the front of the neck through what had been an entry wound, turned down, leaving particles of lead throughout Kennedy’s neck, but keeping its copper alloy jacket intact, and, losing no weight, either paused for 1.3 seconds before striking Connally or so lightly and swiftly struck him that he did not respond for 1.3 seconds, then plunged through the thorax of the Governor, shattering a rib, yet losing no weight and, with its copper alloy jacket still intact, its diabolical velocity still undiminished and possessing an uncanny direction-changing ability, exited through a gaping wound in the Governor’s chest, turned right, smashing through the Governor’s right wrist and breaking one of the hardest bones in the human body, leaving lead particles behind, yet losing no weight, its copper alloy jacket still intact, exited the wrist, turned down and left, and imbedded itself in the femur bone of the Governor’s left thigh, where, exhausted, it would drop up and out, its copper alloy jacket still intact and without weight loss, leaving lead fragments in the Governor’s thigh, but with one last great effort, tucking itself under the mattress of a stretcher used in the emergency red blanket treatment of a small black boy at Parkland Memorial Hospital, from which, helpfully, it would heave itself out when it was needed as evidence.
Uh . . . . what? Something is very wrong here . . . Vincent Bugliosi is a well-respected prosecutor. How can his conclusion that the single-bullet theory has been proven “beyond all possible doubt” (based on his five reasons) possibly be reconciled with the previous paragraph?!
At this point, as the Immortal Bard could have told us, you may be sensing something rotten in the state of the Union. Psychiatrist Dr. Martin Schotz, in a speech entitled “The Waters of Knowledge versus The Waters of Uncertainty,” delivered on November 20, 1998 to the National Conference of the Coalition on Political Assassinations (COPA), smelled a rat, and began to follow the thread:
Over and over again we hear people asking for more and more information from the government. I suggest to you that the problem is not that we have insufficient data. The problem is that we dare not analyze the data we have had all along. In fact we need very little data. Honestly, as far as I’m concerned you can throw almost the whole 26 volumes of the Warren Commission in the trash can. All you need to do is look at this . . .
And then Schotz contrasted two images related to the aforementioned single-bullet theory, the first an illustration produced under the supervision of autopsy doctors for the Warren Commission, and the second a photograph of President Kennedy’s jacket produced by the FBI, both said to show the entry point of a bullet shot from the rear of the President:
Note that the illustration on the left shows the bullet entry wound at or above the collar; the photograph on the right reveals that the bullet entry wound actually entered over 5 inches below the collar, and that the neck “exit wound” in the left illustration therefore had to have been not only a separate wound, but also a wound of entry, indicating a separate shot from the front . . . where Oswald was not. So much for the single-bullet theory, and so much for the idea of Oswald as the “lone assassin,” two hypotheses elegantly destroyed with a mere two images.
But there is more to the tale than that. Schotz tells us where the thread is heading: 4
On the left is the Warren Commission drawing of the path of the “magic” bullet. To the right is a photograph of the hole in the President’s jacket. Now what does this tell us? It tells us without a shadow of a doubt that the President’s throat wound was an entry wound, and that there was a conspiracy without any question. But it tells us much more. It tells us that the Warren Commission knew that the conspiracy was obvious and that the Commission was engaged in a criminal conspiracy after the fact to obstruct justice. The Chief Justice of the United States was a criminal accessory to the murder of the President. Senator Arlen Specter is a criminal accessory to murder. The Warren Report was not a mistake; it was and is an obvious act of criminal fraud.
Think of this for a moment. The Warren Report is an obvious criminal act of fraud and no history department in any college or university is willing to say so. What does such silence mean?
Didn’t see that one coming, did you? I told you to prepare to be amazed!
Dr. Schotz’s extraordinarily provocative point takes us back to where we began. Studying the Kennedy assassination brings us out of the realm of mere history, and into the world of what has academically and euphemistically been termed the “social construction of reality”: just what is history anyway? Is it what actually occurred, or is it the version that we are told occurred? How do we decide which is the correct version of history? What version of h
istory best conforms to the evidence? And if there is a version of history which best conforms to the evidence, why would anyone report a different version of history?
And, if a different version of history is reported, and all the evidence goes against that version, how do we explain the fact that so many people have been, and continue to be, perpetually fooled? If so, the real story of the Kennedy assassination would be that we don’t know the real story of the Kennedy assassination!
Think The Matrix.
Think The Truman Show.
Think The Prisoner.
This is what we are talking about, people!
If Schotz is right, then the citizens of America have a problem on their hands . . . the information they have been given in this case, and, by extension, possibly dozens or hundreds of other cases related to historical events, could possibly be describing a parallel (but opposing) world of fiction masquerading as a world of fact.