by Barry Ernest
The FBI said nothing about whether copper traces were also found surrounding the “slit” in the shirt or the “nick” in the tie. In testimony, FBI firearms expert Robert Frazier cleared up the question.
Specter: Is the nick consistent with a 6.5 millimeter bullet having caused the nick?
Frazier: Yes. Any projectile could have caused the nick. In this connection there was no metallic residue found on the tie, and for that matter there was no metallic residue found on the shirt at the holes in the front. However, there was in the back.10
Why weren’t copper traces found on the front? That question was never asked.
Frazier’s use of the word “projectile” is revealing and shows his inability to categorically say it was a bullet that caused the “slit” in the collar. The “slit,” he said, “is not specifically characteristic of a bullet hole to the extent that you could say it was to the exclusion of being a piece of bone or some other type of projectile.”11
J. Edgar Hoover made a similarly guarded reference to the coat and shirt holes in a March 23, 1964, reply to J. Lee Rankin, who had asked the FBI whether those holes were of entrance or exit. Hoover wrote:
The hole in the back of the coat and the hole in the back of the shirt were in general, circular in shape and the ends of the torn threads around the holes were bent inward. These characteristics are typical of bullet entrance holes.
The hole in the front of the shirt was a ragged slitlike hole and the ends of the torn threads around the hole were bent outward. These characteristics are typical of an exit hole for a projectile.12
It is interesting to note that it was termed a “bullet” going in, yet a “projectile” coming out. The two are not synonymous. If, for instance, a fragment from the president’s exploding skull caused the throat wound, what happened to the bullet that entered his back? The FBI wrote, “Medical examination of the President’s body had revealed that the bullet which entered his back had penetrated to a distance of less than a finger length.”13
Was that the bullet that worked its way out of the wound to be later found on a stretcher?
Two photographs of Kennedy’s coat and shirt reveal the location of the rear bullet holes. Those pictures were published by the FBI14 but not included in the Warren Report or its twenty-six volumes.15 Both graphically show the dark coat and blood-drenched white dress shirt Kennedy was wearing, and both clearly reveal bullet holes that on first glance appear considerably lower than what the Commission concluded.
Cmdr. James J. Humes, who with Cmdr. J. Thornton Boswell and Lt. Col. Pierre A. Finck performed the autopsy on the night of the assassination, confirmed the bullet-hole locations in Kennedy’s clothing during his testimony. Under questioning by Arlen Specter, Humes admitted the holes were at a distance of “approximately 6 inches below the top of the collar and 2 inches to the right of the middle seam” on both garments.16
Seemingly in contradiction with himself, the doctor then stated the holes in the coat and shirt “conform quite well” with the location of the wound as shown in Commission Exhibit 386, a drawing that strangely depicts that wound as being much higher than what Humes had just described, actually at the base of Kennedy’s neck.17
Humes attempted to clarify the discrepancy by saying because Kennedy was “an extremely well developed, muscular young man…” both his coat and shirt likely were bunched or pushed up high on his back.18 Therefore, a shot through the bunched clothing at a height depicted by the Commission would appear lower on the coat when the garment was stretched out. This bunching effect, he explained, would be accentuated if the president had been waving to the crowd with an upraised right arm at the time the shot hit him from behind. Humes then cited a single frame from the Zapruder film showing Kennedy “just prior to the wounding” with a slightly raised right arm, waving to onlookers.19
In that photograph, Kennedy has not yet moved out of view of Zapruder’s camera lens to a position behind the Stemmons Freeway street sign, where it was determined the first shot actually struck him. A timelier picture Humes should have examined was one taken by bystander Phil Willis, who was emphatic when he testified that he snapped it at precisely the moment he heard the first shot.20 Taken from behind the presidential limousine and looking down Elm Street, the picture clearly shows Kennedy, his right arm no longer in the air and now lowered from the earlier waving motion captured in the Zapruder frame.21
And there appears to be no irregularity in the way Kennedy’s coat lies across his shoulders.
Additional testimony also supports a shot hitting Kennedy lower in the back. On the flight back to Washington five hours after the assassination, Secret Service Agent Glen Bennett jotted down in his notebook that he actually saw the first shot strike Kennedy “about 4 inches down from the right shoulder.”22 Bennett was in the car directly behind the presidential limousine.
He reinforced that statement, giving the same measurement and description, when he prepared a follow-up report of his activities the next day.23 Despite the agent’s account being in conflict with the Commission’s placement of the wound, the Report still gave him credit when it wrote, “Substantial weight may be given Bennett’s observation.”24
Secret Service Agent Clinton Hill, summoned to the morgue specifically to observe Kennedy’s wounds, testified he “saw an opening in the back, about 6 inches below the neckline to the right-hand side of the spinal column.”25
In contrast also was the November 26, 1963, report of FBI Agents James W. Sibert and Francis X. O’Neill. This report was available only at the Archives. Both agents witnessed the autopsy and stated the bullet hole in Kennedy’s back “was below the shoulders.”26 During the autopsy, the attending doctors probed that wound, the agents wrote, but determined the bullet had not penetrated very far into Kennedy’s body since “the end of the opening could be felt with the finger.”27
This version of events is reinforced by Secret Service Agent Roy Kellerman, who testified he was standing beside Finck as he probed the wound “with his instrument and I said, ‘Colonel, where did it go?’” Kellerman continued, “He said, ‘There are no lanes for an outlet of this entry in this man’s shoulder.’”28 Kellerman also described the wound as “a hole in his shoulder.”29
During the autopsy, Commander Boswell completed a “face sheet” that showed front and rear body diagrams, typically used in these instances to mark wound locations. On the rearward diagram he drew a bullet hole low on the back, in a spot that matched the clothing holes and where others had observed the wound. It is in sharp contrast to the higher position presented by the Commission.30
Perhaps all the witnesses had been wrong. Perhaps the position of the wound on the autopsy diagram had been placed incorrectly. Perhaps the coat and shirt had indeed “bunched.”
One thing was certain, though: the question of exactly where that bullet had entered was of critical importance. The entire lone-assassin theory hinged on it.
It was a question easily answered. All that was necessary were the autopsy X-rays and photographs.
The Commission’s Reenactment
But the Warren Commission never officially examined those critical pieces of evidence. Remarkably, it never allowed doctors on the witness stand to view them either, even though those doctors hinted at the inexactitude of their testimony without them.
The wound-location problem caused internal concerns as well. One of those bothered was Norman Redlich, a special assistant to J. Lee Rankin. In an April 27, 1964, memorandum to Rankin, less than five weeks before the government’s investigation was scheduled to end, Redlich discussed the confusion over this fundamental issue.
“The purpose of this memorandum,” Redlich wrote, “is to explain the reasons why certain members of the staff feel that it is important to take certain on-site photographs in connection with the location of the approximate points at which the three bullets struck the occupants of the Presidential limousine.”31
When Redlich referred to three bullets striking Kenn
edy and Connally, he was citing the FBI Summary Report issued on December 9, 1963, which stated Kennedy had been struck in the back by one shot, Connally a separate second shot, and Kennedy the third and final bullet. Although that scenario eliminated the “single-bullet” problems, it did not account for the shot that missed and caused the cheek wound to bystander James Tague. Nor was it possible to fire Oswald’s rifle three times within the timeframe shown by the Zapruder film and necessary to make the FBI’s theory work.
The FBI’s solution, therefore, implied a case for conspiracy.
“Our report presumably will state that the President was hit by the first bullet, Governor Connally by the second, and the President by the third and fatal bullet,” Redlich continued. “The report will also conclude that the bullets were fired by one person located in the sixth floor southeast corner window of the TSBD building.”32
This paragraph contradicted itself. If the first sentence was accurate, the second could not be, under the constraints already described.
“As our investigation now stands, however, we have not shown that these events could possibly have occurred in the manner suggested above. All we have is a reasonable hypothesis which appears to be supported by the medical testimony but which has not been checked out against the physical facts at the scene of the assassination.”33
Redlich recognized the importance of determining where the first shot struck Kennedy but, incredibly, told his boss, “Our intention is not to establish the point with complete accuracy, but merely to substantiate the hypothesis which underlies the conclusions that Oswald was the sole assassin.”34
Accuracy seemed not the issue. Showing Oswald did it alone was.
Even though what he was writing—three shots, three hits—was in agreement with the FBI’s conclusion, Redlich still felt that the FBI was wrong: “I should add that the facts which we now have in our possession, submitted to us in separate reports from the FBI and Secret Service, are totally incorrect and, if left uncorrected, will present a completely misleading picture.”35
How Redlich knew in advance that the “facts” were “totally incorrect” and would provide “a completely misleading picture” is unknown. This is especially odd since his recommendation for on-site testing to verify or invalidate those “facts” was the purpose of his April memorandum to Rankin in the first place.
Regardless, Redlich felt that the two agencies he was criticizing should still be the ones to conduct the tests. “It may well be that this project should be undertaken by the FBI and Secret Service with our [the Commission’s] assistance instead of being done as a staff project,” he wrote. “The important thing is that the project be undertaken expeditiously.”36
It took a month. On May 24, 1964, a simulated presidential limousine slowly rolled down Elm Street in Dealey Plaza, the curious watching from the sidelines. The FBI and Secret Service were doing their best to recreate “as precisely as possible what happened on November 22, 1963.”37
Nothing was left to chance: the sixth floor had been restored to its sinister appearance, and an FBI agent crouched there at a half-open window and peered into the telescopic sight of Oswald’s rifle, which was mounted to a tripod and now with a camera atop it, recording “the view as was seen by the assassin.”38 Two other agents “with approximately the same physical characteristics sat in the car in the same relative positions as President Kennedy and Governor Connally had occupied.”39 Even the old oak tree in front of the Depository was checked but spared pruning, since it “was approximately the same as on the day of the assassination.”40
The Connally stand-in was wearing the coat the governor had worn, its back bullet hole circled in chalk. The Kennedy stand-in was not wearing the president’s coat. The back of the suit coat he did have on also was marked in chalk at the location where the bullet had entered.
And there it was, clear in the Commission’s own published record of this reconstruction. The chalk mark on the Kennedy stand-in’s back was much lower than where the Commission ultimately put it. It was right where witnesses described it as being, exactly where Dr. Boswell had put it on his autopsy face sheet.41
The FBI and Secret Service had placed that mark on the stand-in where both agencies felt it belonged—in the back, not the neck.
In describing the reenactment, the Warren Report stated, “The back of the stand-in for the President was marked with chalk at the point where the bullet entered.”42
If that were so, it meant the entrance wound to Kennedy was lower than the exit. It could not have gone on to strike Connally.
Enter Philadelphia attorney and Commission Assistant Counsel Arlen Specter. On the very afternoon the reenactment was completed, Specter was seen holding a trajectory rod between the two stand-ins, arbitrarily creating the only path that would allow a bullet to pass through Kennedy and still hit Connally. That path was higher on the Kennedy stand-in’s back, well above the chalk mark and now in the neck.43
A week later, Specter officially adopted this notion, in effect saying the witnesses, the doctors, and even the FBI and Secret Service were all wrong. The wound was now higher on Kennedy’s body. The same bullet had then gone on to hit Connally.
Oswald therefore did it and he did it alone. The single-bullet theory had been created.
Sometimes at the Archives, you can just plain get lucky. There is no other way of describing it.
On my researcher’s table that day were boxes of files containing the official galley proofs of selected testimony sent to the Government Printing Office for inclusion in the twenty-six volumes. Based on Roger Craig telling me his testimony had been changed, I was looking for what Victoria Adams had said under oath—her official transcript of testimony—versus what had been printed in the twenty-six volumes, checking for any substantial changes between the two. The boxes were dusty, apparently never opened since 1964.
What I found was a photocopy of the court reporter’s transcription of Miss Adams’ testimony given in Dallas on the afternoon of April 7, 1964, before David Belin. Formerly stamped Top Secret, as all testimonies once had been, that classification on hers was now crossed out and marked canceled as of November 21, 1967. The court reporter was listed as Helen Laidrich.
I remembered from reading Miss Adams’ testimony in the twenty-six volumes that she had agreed to waive her right to examine and sign her transcript before having it sent to Washington. The copy I was now holding must have been that version, for it had no signature, corrections, or notations on any of its twenty-three typewritten pages. The wording was identical to what was printed in the twenty-six volumes.
I was casually flipping through another one of the boxes when, in the middle and between two brown government folders, the white pages of a document flashed by. Closer examination revealed the inscription Certificate of Death, NAVMED N (Rev. 4-58) Front. It was President Kennedy’s official death certificate.
It was not the often-confused one signed by Parkland Hospital’s Dr. Kemp Clark, who released Kennedy’s body for transport back to Washington.44 This was the federal certificate of death for the president of the United States—the one signed the day after the assassination by Kennedy’s personal physician, Rear Adm. George Gregory Burkley; the one Weisberg had been searching for; the one the Archives said it did not have. Yet here it was, buried in a box of documents that had been earmarked for publication in the twenty-six volumes of evidence.
I tried to be nonchalant, gazing at the words as if I was reading nothing more than a copy of Oswald’s high-school truancy records. I felt as if all eyes were on me, though, mindful of my illicit discovery. When I serenely turned to look, life in the research room was as normal.
Page one was perfunctory. President Kennedy had died at forty-six years, six months of age with blue eyes, auburn hair, and a ruddy complexion and at a height of seventy-two inches and a weight of 172 pounds. The cause of death was listed as “gunshot wound, skull.”45
If the certificate held nothing more than this—no graph
ic pictures or words—why had it been kept out of the Warren Report and the twenty-six volumes? What was it doing stuffed in a box of papers, all others of which had been published?
Perhaps it was because of page two. Under line item thirty, “Summary of Facts Relating to Death,” Burkley wrote the following: “President John Fitzgerald Kennedy, while riding in the motorcade in Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963, and at approximately 12:30 p.m., was struck in the head by an assassin’s bullet and a second wound occurred in the posterior back at about the level of the third thoracic vertebra.”46
Had it not been for my studies of human anatomy to better understand all the medical jargon by the doctors, I would never have caught the significance of this statement. A wound “at about the level of the third thoracic vertebra” was considerably lower on the back than where the Commission placed it. In fact, “at about the . . . third thoracic vertebra” was consistent with the evidence: where the FBI and Secret Service had placed it with a chalk mark during their reenactment tests, where the FBI had said it was in all their investigative reports, where witnesses had testified they saw it, where the bullet holes were in Kennedy’s coat and shirt, and where Dr. Boswell had drawn it on his autopsy face sheet.
Coincidentally, and despite Dr. Boswell’s later comment that he erred when he drew that face sheet, the original face sheet he had prepared had been verified and signed by Admiral Burkley. Yet a copy of that very face sheet as published by the Warren Commission failed to show Burkley’s handwritten notation, “Verified” and his signature, “G.G. Burkley.” As the face sheet appeared in the Commission’s own evidence, the admiral’s handwritten and corroborative notations had been covered over.