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By Bill MacDowall
No one who has ever seen a professional magic show can fail to have been impressed by the sheer artistry of a talented magician. Everyone knows there is no magic involved, but the illusions are so well put together that the audience is forced, however briefly, to suspend disbelief.
Props aside, the magician's main skill is the ability to misdirect the attention of the observer long enough to perpetrate the deception. In practice, while you watch his right hand, his left hand is used to palm some object he will shortly produce, as if by magic, "from thin air!"
For 33 years, essentially similar techniques have been used to hide the truth of the JFK assassination. Thousands of pieces of evidence, testimony, opinion and lies have been used to misdirect the attention of the audience and obscure the few salient facts that actually do exist.
To this day, people still argue about magic bullets. They still cite earwitness testimony, eyewitness testimony, jet effect theories etc etc. The entire case is a morass, a self-perpetuating farago of truth, half-truth and fantasy.
The key issue upon which the entire assassination saga turns is in establishing the number of gunmen who fired shots on Dealey Plaza that fateful day. That shots were fired from above and behind JFK there should be little doubt. It is the fatal head shot which remains controversial.
In trying to decide where that fatal head shot came from, it is vital to analyse the available evidence objectively. The official view has always held that, because the majority of earwitnesses reported 3 shots from one direction, because 3 shell cases and a Mannlicher-Carcano rifle were found in one location (the TSBD) only one gunman (LHO) fired at the President that day.
The issue of earwitness testimony has never been accorded the same scrutiny as eyewitness testimony, but as we shall see, the former is no more reliable than the latter and in the context of Dealey Plaza, probably much less so.
A professional assassin seeking to kill the President and safely make his getaway could have chosen no better location to perform the deed than Dealey Plaza. Dealey Plaza is effectively a huge echo chamber and any shots fired there bounce and reverberate off buildings with such intensity that identifying the source of any shot is unrealistic. This is not the context that earwitness evidence has been presented in but it is nevertheless the truth.
On the day of the assassination, a strong wind (gusting to 20mph) was blowing north to south diagonally across the triple underpass towards the TSBD. The effect of a strong wind gusting in this direction would be to disrupt the flow of air through Elm Street making it even more difficult to tie down the source of any shots. A further factor is that a strong wind blowing in a north to south direction would carry the sound of a shot from the knoll away from the knoll toward the TSBD where it would reverberate back into Elm Street.
Anyone trying to make sense of the earwitness testimony has to do so in the knowledge that the unique echo characteristics combined with the weather that day makes all earwitness testimony about as reliable as eyewitness testimony in a thick fog. If that assertion is to be viable, then one would expect to find a wide diversity in reported earwitness testimony and that is exactly what we do find. Critics have argued that "the majority of earwitnesses reported three shots from one location" which is a carefully worded statement which implies far more than it actually says.
What any witness claims to have seen or heard has to be viewed in context, the context in this case being the Dealey Plaza echo chamber. The real question which has to be asked is, given the unique acoustical properties of Dealey Plaza and the circumstances prevailing on that day, is it likely that any witness could be relied upon to provide an accurate, reliable account of the number and source of all the shots fired at the President that day.
When witnesses are questioned, they can only relate the circumstances as they believe them. The onus is on the investigator to put that testimony in context. In the case of the earwitness testimony, the real truth is that no-one could be expected to give reliable testimony as to the source and number of shots fired that day but nowhere will you find the evidence presented in that context. This is a misdirection of attention worthy of any magician.
For more than 30 years, people have argued over earwitness testimony without realising that this was never the real issue. For those who have sought, for whatever reason, to obfuscate the truth, such disputes have been a welcome distraction.
The misrepresentation of earwitness testimony was not the only evidence presented in an illusory fashion, it was only the start of a trend. Next on the agenda (and there was an agenda) came the eyewitness testimony. Eyewitness testimony is notoriously unreliable at the best of times and no-one who wishes to be taken seriously disputes this fact. However, there is one piece of eyewitness evidence in the JFK case that just won't go away.
On the day of the assassination, clothing manufacturer Abraham Zapruder, who had business premises in the Dal-Tex Building adjacent to the TSBD, shot the most famous home movie in history.
From a vantage point atop a concrete block near the triple underpass, Zapruder filmed the motorcade as it proceeded down Elm Street. Apart from a brief moment when the Presidential limo is hidden behind a sign board, Zapruder succeeded in recording the entire assassination.
No single piece of eyewitness material has been argued over more than the Zapruder film. It has been analysed, over and over by amateur and professional alike and still the controversy rages over the interpretation of it's content. Taken in conjunction with other evidence, I don't think that anyone seriously disputes that the reaction of JFK as he emerges in front of the sign board is in response to a shot fired from above and behind the motorcade. The issue of whether that same shot also passed through JFK and on into Governor Connally is another hotly debated point but is outside the scope of this article.
A few moments after JFK reacts to the shot described above, his head suddenly appears to "explode" in a plume of blood and tissue. To the naked eye, the President's head is thrown violently back and to the left, a reaction indicative of a shot fired from a position in front and to the right of the motorcade.
The raw footage shows an event which is troublesome to anyone who seeks to establish that all of the shots fired at JFK came from the TSBD to the exclusion of any other location.
In the years following the assassination, some interesting expert opinion has been canvassed to remove this troublesome evidence which appeared to contradict the official verdict that, acting alone, LHO fired all of the shots from the 6th floor window of the TSBD.
Scientific evidence is manna from heaven in the JFK case because it is pitched above the comprehension of the layman and removes the debate from the public arena into the realms of physics where reality is replaced by equations and experimental postulation.
The public perception of science is largely based upon ignorance. Far from being a world made up of highly intelligent, objective individuals, the scientific community is no different from any other group of people. There are within the scientific community clever people and there are incompetents. There are egotists and there are sycophants. There are those who believe the universe began with a "big bang" and those who susbsribe to the "Solid State" theory..each will have the facts to back their argument. If the history of science tells us one thing, it is that the real world does not readily lend itself to replication in the laboratory.
In the JFK case, the laboratory came up with the "Jet Effect" a highly plausible explanation of how a shot fired from behind the President passed through his skull, exited from the side and ejected brain matter and blood with sufficient force to throw his head back in the direction of the shooter.
Some time ago, I had the opportunity to view an enhanced copy of the Zapruder film using the facilities of a professional editing studio. Previously, I had only viewed the film on standard domestic equipment. The sequence of events revealed by viewing the Zapruder film on professional equipment, is substantially different to those seen under "normal" conditions.
Shortly before JFK's head explodes in response to the fatal head shot, his head begins to move forward in a manner suggestive of a bullet strike. A full 9/100th sec later, his head explodes and throws out a plume of blood and tissue. We know that any bullet fired from the Mannlicher Carcano would impact at around 1800ft/sec and emerge from the side of the President's skull at around 1600ft/sec. No one is suggesting that the President's head would have remained stationary after the impact of a bullet fired from behind, the fact that his head moves forward is expected. What is odd, is that a bullet impacting at 1800ft/sec and exiting at around 1600ft/sec would take a full 9/100th sec to traverse the short distance between entry and exit points.
Investigation of the "Jet Effect" reveals a further anomaly. If a grid is superimposed on the relevant frames, what actually happens at the time the President's head explodes is that the plume of blood and tissue spreads out from the side of his head into a halo thus negating the "Jet Effect" hypothesis. Simultaneously, a large fragment of JFK's skull is thrown into the air over Jackie's head. There is only one conclusion that can be drawn from this evidence. Moments after the first shot struck the President, a second shot from above and behind the motorcade hit JFK's head sending it forward. Less than a second later, a third shot fired from the front and to the right of the motorcade caused JFK's head to explode.
Beyond any shadow of a doubt, the third missile to strike JFK's head was a dum-dum bullet. The damage it caused is so characteristic of this type of bullet that further discussion is pointless. No-one has ever offered a plausible explanation of how a jacketed bullet with a velocity of 1800ft/sec could cause the effects observed in the Zapruder film.
Returning briefly to the earwitness evidence, expecting anyone present in Dealey Plaza that day to separate a fourth shot fired less than a second after the previous one and whilst the reverberations of the former were still echoing around Dealey Plaza is unrealistic in the extreme.
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