|
Evidence, by
its very nature, can be controverted. If it could not be,
it would not be evidence but an act of faith. Any document
can be a forgery, any witness can give false testimony,
and any object can be either fabricated or misidentified.
Nevertheless, some evidence is better than other evidence.
And when the best evidence is examined, tested and placed
in the proper context, it provides the best way we have
to establish the facts.
In the case of the assassination of
President Kennedy, the central facts have been investigated
and re-investigated for nearly three decades. The evidence-testers
have included the FBI, the Treasury Department, the Warren
Commission, the Rockefeller Commission, the House Select Committee
on Assassination, the Department of Justice, independent coroners
and forensic experts, and assassination researchers. Consider,
for example, the much disputed autopsy findings of President
Kennedy. Although the autopsy examination itself was badly
handled by the Navy, and insufficiently probed by the Warren
Commission, many of the problems were resolved the re-examination
of the X-rays and photographs of the President's body by the
panel of nine independent pathologists (including one Warren
Commission critic) appointed by the House Select Committee.
These findings, not those in the Warren Commission (or my
criticisms of the original process in Inquest) constitute
the best evidence.
Since as imperfect as the process
has been, it has resulted in filling in much of the reality
of what happened on November 22nd, 1963. I believe that the
seven following questions now can be answered-- or at least
narrowed down to finite possibilities.
1. Where did the bullets come from
that hit President Kennedy and Governor Connally?
The best available evidence on the
nature of the discernible wounds inflicted on Kennedy is,
first, the photographs and X-Rays of the President taken during
the autopsy at Bethesda Naval Hospital and, second, the fibers
of the President's clothing.
Although the photographs and X-Rays
were not examined by the Warren Commission or its staff, leading
to considerable doubt as to the validity of the Commission's
conclusions, they were subsequently examined ,first, by a
panel of three pathologists and a radiologist appointed by
Attorney General Ramsey Clark in 1981, and then more thoroughly
in 1976 by the nine man panel appointed by the House Select
Committee. The members of this latter panel had between them
experience in performing over 100,000 autopsies. The House
Select Committee, moreover, established the authenticity of
these photographs by having forensic dentists compare them
with Kennedy's pre-mortem dental records and medical X-rays.
All these pathologists agreed, without
any dissent, that all the detectable wounds in the photographs
and X-rays of President Kennedy had been caused by bullets
fired from behind and above him, confirming the conclusions
of the doctors who had performed the autopsy itself as well
as those of the FBI and the Warren Commission. They also agreed
unanimously from a reconstruction of the medical evidence
that Governor Connally's multiple wounds had been caused by
a bullet fired from the same direction.
The path of the first bullet to hit
the President was further established by the President's shirt
and jacket fibers. The FBI analysis, as well as the re-analysis,
showed that they were pushed inward, not outward, by the projectile
which could only have happened if the President was shot from
behind.
The path of the bullet that hit Governor
Connally was also confirmed by Governor Connally's testimony
that he was certain he was hit from behind.
The panel also unanimously concluded
from the X-Rays that the fatal bullet had entered the rear
of the President's head near the cowlick area and exited from
the right front. None of the nine pathologist, including Warren
Commission critic Dr. Cyril Wecht, were able to find any medical
evidence that this massive wound was caused by a bullet fired
from in front or side of the President's car. To be sure,
a frame-by-frame analysis of the film of the assassination
made by Abraham Zapruder shows President Kennedy's head at
the time of impact moving backwards, not forward as might
be expected. But this is not the evidence it seems to be because,
depending on the neurological reactions to such a wound, the
head can snap in any direction after being shot. Wound ballistic
experts demonstrated this counterintuitive point to the House
Select Committee through a filmed experiment that clearly
showed that, when hit with a rifle bullet from the rear, the
head could move either backward or forward. So there is not
necessarily a relationship between the direction that the
head moves and the direction from which the bullet strikes
the head.
By tracing the trajectory of the bullets
from the path of the wounds, an analyst from the National
Aeronautic and Space Administration was able to plot all three
shots to their source the upper floors of the southeast face
of the Texas Book Depository. This was the same building that
five witnesses --Howard Brennan, Amos Lee Euins, Carolyn Walther,
Arnold Rowland and Barbara Rowland-- claimed to have seen
a rifle protruding from a South-eastern window at about the
time of the assassination (Brennan told police he actually
saw the rifle being fired and reloaded before the suspect
was apprehended).
While it is possible that numerous
other shots may have been fired from other locations and directions
and missed their target, we know from the best evidence, the
autopsy photographs, that the shots that caused all the discernible
wounds came from the a high window on the south eastern side
of the Texas Book Depository.
2. Did the Mannlicher-Carcano rifle
found by police on the sixth floor of the Texas Depository
fire these shots?
The best evidence for identifying
the assassination weapon is the two bullet fragments found
in the President's car and the nearly whole bullet found in
a stretcher in Parkland Hospital in Dallas. In 1964, FBI experts
ballistically matched this bullet and fragments to the rifle
barrel of the Mannlicher-Carcano by microscopically comparing
of the markings in the barrel with those found on the bullet
and fragments. A firearms panel of independent experts appointed
by the House Select Committee re-examined this evidence in
1977 and re-confirmed that the bullet and fragments had come
from that Mannlicher Carcano rifle.
In addition, the House Select Committee
employed a very advanced form of neutron activation analysis
to match the recovered bullet and fragments to the ammunition
used in the Mannlicher Carcano. In this technique, traces
from the ballistic evidence are bombarded by neutrons in a
nuclear reactor so that the precise composition of elements--
antimony, silver, and copper-- can be measured by their emissions
on a gamma-ray spectrometer to an accuracy of one-billionth
of a gram. The composition of traces from the bullet and fragments
were thus compared to that of the unfired bullet found in
the chamber of the Mannlicher-Carcano and found to exactly
match. This analysis convincingly showed that all the ballistic
material that was recovered, and could be tested, came from
two bullets, and both bullets identically matched in their
composition the ammunition for the Mannlicher-Carcano rifle.
Although questions can be raised about
the general accuracy of the Mannlicher-Carcano rifle found
in the depository, there can be no doubt that the particular
weapon can be fired with deadly accuracy at a target 100 yards
away-- the distance from the depository to the President's
car. After the assassination three different FBI agents fired
this exact rifle and scored bull's-eyes two out of three times.
[NEXT
PAGE ]
|
