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I want to tell the
Truth, and I can't tell it here.
I can't tell it here.
Note: The following was originally written as a letter to the editor of the Syracuse (New York) Post-Standard.
A DUMDUM BULLET KILLED JFK
Better late than never, they say.
So, 37 years later, the Associated Press must be applauded for its coverage of recent developments in the still-unsolved murder of President John F. Kennedy. More such media attention may yet shine light on what millions of observers worldwide consider The Crime of The Century, a crime compounded by the U.S. government's repeated efforts to whitewash it.
Unfortunately, the AP wire story transmitted out of Washington, DC on Jan. 21 merely mirrored the government's fairy tale about a "lone nut" killer, rather than clarifying what really happened in broad daylight on Elm Street in downtown Dallas, Texas, on Nov. 22, 1963.
The AP focused on fibers found on a bullet fragment recovered from the President's Lincoln convertible, reporting that new microscopic tests prove those fibers could not be traced to clothing worn by JFK or Texas Gov. John Connolly, who was wounded in the shooting. (The tests were conducted for the National Archives and Records Administration, and the entire NARA Report can be reviewed on the Internet at www.jfklancer.com.)
A close reading of the AP story, however, shows that the fibers were not even from cloth but from paper, and the article also notes that many researchers believe "the fragments have been contaminated over the years." The AP dutifully quoted Assassination Archives and Research Center executive Jim Lesar, who pointed out that "the chain of possession of the fragments was abysmal."
The AP also noted that four other bullet fragments recovered from the limousine contained human tissue, but that DNA analysis proved "inconclusive."
The worst assumption of the AP story, however, was its lead paragraph assertion that the fragment containing fibers was "from the bullet that killed President Kennedy." Truth is, the fatal bullet has never been found nor identified in any way shape or form.
"The tested fragment was most likely from a bullet which missed Kennedy completely," said JFK assassination researcher Robert D. Morningstar, based in New York City. "That in itself conclusively proves the presence of multiple gunmen."
On the evening of the assassination, the ill-fated Lincoln automobile was returned to Washington, and Secret Service agents found two bullet fragments in the front seat that evening, a portion of the bullet's nose weighing 44.6 grains and a piece of its base weighing 21 grains, according to the Warren Commission, which investigated the crime in 1964 and published the Warren Report that September. FBI agents examined the automobile more closely the following day, on Nov. 23, 1963, and discovered three more small lead particles, and a crack on the limousine's windshield as well as a dent in the chrome around the windshield. Although the metallic content of each of these fragments was said to be "similar," the investigators in 1964 as well as now in 2000--could not say for certain that the fragments were all part of one and the same bullet.
"Bad Science"
Nevertheless, Morningstar, the author of a scientific study of the assassination titled <*>JFK Antimedicine,<*> argues that the human tissue retained on some of the bullet fragments could indeed reveal their source if properly tested in a modern laboratory.
"Although organic tissue is purported to have been on one of the fragments (CE567), it was not tested using modern DNA identification techniques to make a positive identification of the source --JFK or Connally--of the 'skin tissue' which was purportedly found," the researcher said. "This in and of itself renders the conclusions of the AP article and the National Archives and Records Administration Report what I would call premature expostulation and, therefore, null and void as far as identifying the fragment as--quote--the bullet which killed JFK unquote. The entire scheme is a good example of 'bad science.'
"In my opinion," Morningstar continued, "the fact that the tissue is identified as 'skin tissue' and not brain matter suggests strongly that it is NOT the bullet which killed JFK since the tissue surrounding the 'bullet which killed JFK' would have been thoroughly immersed and washed in brain tissue had it passed through the victim's head. As it is, the fragment could easily have been contaminated with the blood of Governor Connally which pooled on the limousine floor and seat, near where this fragment was recovered."
In assessing the bullet fragments discovered in the death car, the Warren Commissioners simply dealt with this evidence just as they did with other parts of the puzzle which didn't fit their predetermined conclusion of a lone gunman: They ignored it.
Although dozens of eye- and ear-witnesses in Dealey Plaza that day said they heard more than three gunshots including at least one originating from a picket fence to the front right of the President, the Commission maintained that only three shots were fired and they all rained down from the sixth floor window of the Texas School Book Depository, behind and above the limousine. The Commission's intransigence on this point forced it to adopt what has become known often mockingly--as "the single bullet theory."
Magic Bullet Theory
Conceived and presented by Commission assistant counsel Arlen Specter, the government theory claims that a single bullet caused ALL of the non-fatal wounds to President Kennedy and Governor Connally, a total of seven wounds. A second shot missed the Lincoln entirely, nicking Dealey Plaza bystander James Tague, and a third shot struck the President in the head.
So much for the "official" story. The real bullet that abruptly ended JFK's life was very likely a frangible projectile fired from somewhere to the right front of the limousine, shattering the President's skull as the "dumdum" bullet exploded on contact. This horrific event can be witnessed by anyone who watches the 26-second Zapruder Film, an 8mm photographic record of the assassination shot that day in Dealey Plaza, by Dallas dressmaker Abraham Zapruder.
President Kennedy's bloody murder is depicted with renewed clarity on the digitally-enhanced 1998 video <*>Image of an Assassination: A New Look at the Zapruder Film<*> (MPI Home Video) . The film itself--sequestered from public screening until 1975--has since become an icon of assassinology and one of the most familiar images in American history. And the new digital enhancement does nothing to dispel the idea that the head shot was fired from the front rather than from behind. The film clearly shows Kennedy's head and body jerking backward and to his left, immediately as the fatal round finds its mark.
The late Sylvia Meagher, who independently indexed the Warren Report's entire 26 volumes of hearings and exhibits, saw the Zapruder Film as confirmation of a conspiracy to kill Kennedy. Examination of the Z-Film, she wrote, "constitutes conclusive and irrefutable proof that the bullet that sent the president violently backward was fired in front of and to the right of the car and not from the Book Depository." In her pioneering 1967 critique of the Warren Commission, <*>Accessories After the Fact<*>, Meagher concludes, "The fatal shot came from somewhere on the grassy knoll."
To Meagher, seeing is believing, but many Warren Commission supporters interpret the rearward head snap much differently. Authors Gerald Posner and Gus Russo, for instance, maintain that all the shots were fired by a Marxist malcontent named Lee Harvey Oswald, who just happened to have found a job at the Texas School Book Depository a mere five weeks before the murder. Posner and Russo cite physicists who postulate that the "jet effect" of the blood and brain matter exiting the front of Kennedy's skull actually rocketed his head and body backward, as seen so clearly in the Z-Film.
A Frangible, Not Magical, Bullet
Where the Warren Report and its apologists see "jet effect" from an exit wound, however, the late New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison saw a dumdum bullet exploding on Kennedy's right temple. "In this enlargement {of the kill shot}," he wrote in his book <*>On the Trail of the Assassins<*>, "it looks like it actually was caused by a frangible bullet." Forensic pathologist Cyril Wecht also believes an exploding bullet fired from the grassy knoll inflicted the fatal wound.
Not only do lawyers and doctors believe a frangible bullet hit Kennedy, so does a professional sniper. Combat-hardened ex-Marine and police sharpshooter Craig Roberts, author of <*>Kill Zone: A Sniper Looks at Dealey Plaza<*>, asked, "How in the world could anyone look at that {Zapruder} film and say that the fatal head strike had come from the rear? The so-called experts who stated that the rearward jerk of Kennedy's head was due to 'muscle reaction,' 'jet force from an erupting bullet' or some other violation of the laws of physics, had obviously never served in combat, where witnessing high-velocity bullet strikes was commonplace...
"Some of the supporters of the Warren Commission...stated that the bullet came from the rear because the eruption of brain matter and blood came out of the front of the president's skull. I saw something else. In a head shot, the exit wound, due to the buildup of hydrostatic pressure, explodes in a conical formation in the down-range direction of the bullet. Yet in the Zapruder film, I could plainly see that the eruption was not a conical shape to the front of the limo, but instead was an explosion that cast fragments both up and down in a vertical plane, and side to side in a horizontal plane. There was only one explanation for this: an exploding or 'frangible' bullet. Such a round explodes on impact--in exactly the manner depicted in the film."
The vicious force of the frangible round sent flesh and bone particles flying in a variety of directions, including back onto the trunk of the car, as Jacqueline Kennedy seated to the President's left--immediately noticed. Seconds after her husband was shot in the head, the First Lady swiftly crawled onto the trunk of the Lincoln to retrieve a piece of the President's skull, Secret Service agent Clint Hill later testified.
Botched Autopsy
If a thorough medical autopsy had been properly performed on the President's remains, the trajectory of the bullet fragments which tore through his brain could have been traced by forensic pathologists. Unfortunately, JFK's autopsy at the Bethesda Naval Hospital was conducted not by competent medical examiners but by two Bethesda administrators with precious little hands-on experience as forensic pathologists. During that hurried and harried post-mortem examination, the autopsy doctors failed to either shave JFK's head or section his brain, two normally routine procedures in the investigation of gunshot wounds to the head.
Then when Pennsylvania pathologist Cyril Wecht went looking for the autopsy specimens in 1972, he found that the National Archives no longer possessed the President's brain. In his 1998 book, <*>Live By The Sword<*>, researcher Gus Russo maintains that Senator Robert F. Kennedy retrieved those specimens and had them surreptitiously buried, in March 1967, along with his brother's body in Arlington National Cemetery.
If only a precise and thorough autopsy had been conducted by the government on the night of Nov. 22, 1963, questions such as those posed by the recently retested bullet fragments would have been answered decades ago.
So, despite its faulty conclusions regarding the new microscopic tests, the AP's willingness to continue to report on the President's 1963 murder stands as welcome and admirable journalism.
Back in the 1960s, when the killers' trail remained hot, the Dallas Police Department, the Secret Service, the FBI, the Warren Commission and later the House Select Committee on Assassinations, all side-stepped their mandate to fully investigate the assassination. As a result, the American news media still bears a responsibility to ferret out the truth, even after all these years.
ELECTION YEAR SIDEBAR
A TALE OF TWO GEORGES
Why now, in the early days of the year 2000, are National Archives researchers attempting once again to give weight to the long embattled "lone gunman" theory of the 1963 JFK assassination?
Manhattan-based researcher Robert Morningstar, a vocal critic of the Warren Report, has a theory about the timing of the recent bullet fragments report:
"The forces of deception remain devious in continuing the cover-up," Morningstar said. He believes that Texas Gov. George W. Bush and the Republican Party which appears ready to anoint him in his run for president, could be embarrassed by revelations which may surface if the JFK hit were fully explored in a public forum.
"The American people are not children," Morningstar said. "They can handle the truth even if the government and the 'media-cracy' rule of the media--continue the duplicity. I believe that the bogus test logic and the inconclusive findings are an attempt at a pre-emptive strike against the JFK assassination community on behalf of the George W. Bush forces who would hate to see the subject of JFK and role the City of Dallas played in his death come up in the general election. Too many people still remember 'Papa Bush's' activities around the Bay of Pigs fiasco and his CIA connections to the Dallas event. 'Baby Bush' and his cohorts must be really worried about this subject to start this hokum so early in the campaign."
Not only did former President George Bush Sr. do business in the 1950s and '60s with the wealthy oilmen of Dallas, in 1975 he was appointed director of the Central Intelligence Agency, long suspected of harboring secret information about the JFK murder. Then President Gerald Ford, a fellow Republican and a former member of the Warren Commission, personally appointed Bush to head the CIA.
More recently, California-based assassination historian Bruce Campbell Adamson published a ten-volume biography of the late CIA-connected Dallas petro-geologist George de Mohrenschildt. Adamson argues strongly that a relationship existed between the senior Bush and the shady international playboy de Mohrenschildt, who was widely regarded as Lee Harvey Oswald's best friend in Dallas during 1962 and '63.
"Former President George Bush has admitted to me that he had known George de Mohrenschildt since 1942," Adamson said, and that relationship continued into the mid-1970s. In addition, "Dimitri Von Mohrenschildt has written to me that Bush had employed George de Mohrenschildt during the 1950s in the oil industry."
After penning an unfinished study of Oswald called <*>Patsy<*>, DeMohrenshildt committed suicide in the spring of 1977, shortly before he was slated to testify before the House Select Committee on Assassinations.
Russ Tarby
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