Not in Your Lifetime: The Defining Book on the J.F.K. Assassination (4 page)

In the fullness of time, however, it has become evident to others that the findings are far from proven. Barber’s discovery triggered an onslaught on the acoustics evidence. Because of the timing, the Academy of Sciences was to conclude the sounds on the recording had to be something
other
than gunshots, static perhaps, but not gunshots.

Fifty years on, a significant number of responsible researchers indeed think that a conspiracy finding based on the acoustics is untenable. A 2001 study by researcher Michael O’Dell suggested that the impulses on the Dictabelt “happen too late to be the assassination gunshots,” and that “there is no statistical significance of 95% or higher for a shot from the grassy knoll.”

On the other hand, one of those who has specialized in the acoustics evidence asserted in a 2010 book that there was indeed a shot from the knoll, and that it was the fatal headshot. Only for O’Dell, author of the 2001 study, to produce a further analysis refuting the Committee’s findings, as this book was going to press.

It is evident that science—whether forensic, acoustic, or ballistic—has produced no certainties, and will not resolve the questions surrounding the Kennedy assassination.

House Assassinations Committee Chief Counsel Robert Blakey, though shaken by the negative studies of the acoustics evidence, nevertheless held to his view. “I think our conclusion was correct,” he has said. “On balance, I say there were two shooters in the
Plaza, and not just because of the acoustics… .” Blakey remained persuaded by “all the other evidence and testimony,” not least the human testimony about the day of the assassination. “I find on balance,” Blakey added, “that the earwitness and eyewitness testimony is credible.”

How Many Shots?
Where From?

“The
great tragedy of Science—the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.”

—Thomas H. Huxley, evolutionist,
nineteenth century

M
uch of the testimony of those present when President Kennedy was shot may seem old hat to readers with long memories. Yet it remains vitally relevant to any serious account of the assassination.

Of 178 people in Dealey Plaza—according to an Assassinations Committee survey—no less than 132 later came to believe that only three shots had been fired. Three spent cartridges were found near the window of the Texas School Book Depository. Initially, therefore, a count of three shots seemed rational, if not conclusive. Most witnesses’ statements, though, were given hours—in some cases weeks—later, when the generally published version of the assassination had already put the total of shots at three. A few people, including Mrs. Kennedy and a Secret Service agent in the follow-up car, thought they had heard as few as two
shots. O thers, though, thought they had heard more than three, some speaking of as many as six or seven.

Ballistics and acoustics specialists have looked at how and why people become mixed up in their memories of gunfire. The sound of a first shot comes upon a witness when he does not expect it, subsequent shots compound the surprise, and muddle ensues. Further confusion may be caused by the fact that a rifle shot actually makes three minutely separated sounds—the muzzle blast, the sound of a bullet breaking the sound barrier, and finally the impact on the target. On the other hand, say the experts, those listening in the immediate target area probably receive the least distorted impression of gunfire.

Oddly, and inexcusably, the first inquiry produced no statement of any kind from the two police outriders traveling to the right rear of the President. Twelve people in the target area did go on record. All but one of the five surviving in the car itself, and two other outriders, spoke of three shots. Their predicament, however, was hardly conducive to rational recall. Mrs. Kennedy understandably said she was “very confused.” Governor Connally was himself severely injured during the shooting, and Mrs. Connally was preoccupied trying to help him. The two outriders to the President’s left rear were shocked by being spattered with the President’s blood and brain matter.

The two Secret Service agents in the car, one of them the driver, had to make vital decisions. Both, however, did have interesting comments on the shots. Agent Kellerman said later that the last sound he recalled was “like a double bang—
bang! bang!
… like a plane going through the sound barrier.” Agent Greer, the driver, also said the last shot cracked out “just right behind” its predecessor. This could conceivably mean the two agents heard a single bullet breaking the sound barrier, or that they
heard two shots very close together indeed—far closer together than one man could achieve with a bolt-operated rifle. Agent Kellerman thought that, based on what he heard and the wounds he observed later at the autopsy, “there have got to be more than three shots.”

In spite of being himself shot in the hail of gunfire, Governor Connally—an experienced hunter—remembered that because of the “rapidity” of the shots, “the thought immediately passed through my mind that there were two or three people involved, or more, in this; or that someone was shooting with an automatic rifle.”

As for the bystanders nearest to the off side of the President’s car, one, Mary Moorman, made estimates ranging from two to four shots. Like those in the car, she was first preoccupied, and then in such a panic, that she was distracted. (She was taking a photograph as the limousine approached, then threw herself to the ground, shrieking, “Get down! They’re shooting!”) Near her, Charles Brehm thought he heard three shots.

Gayle Newman, standing on the curb on the near side of the President’s car, thought there could have been four shots. Then there was Maurice Orr, who also stood on the nearside pavement and was one of those closest to the President. Orr, questioned a few minutes after the tragedy, thought there could have been as many as five shots.

The Warren Report favored the silent testimony of the three cartridges lying near the sixth-floor window, combined with its reading of the autopsy details and the Zapruder film. It said there had been three shots, one of which missed, all fired from behind and above Kennedy.

Then, in 1978, came the acoustic study of the Dictabelt that appeared to cast real doubt on the Warren lone-gunman finding and
suggested—as summarized by the Assassinations Committee’s Robert Blakey—that there had been “four shots … The first, second, and fourth came from the Depository; the third came from the grassy knoll.” Four shots, including one from the raised ground to the right front of the President, posited at least two assassins.

The acoustics study of the Dictabelt appeared to provide a time frame for the shooting. Taking zero as the time of the first shot, the second would have been fired 1.66 seconds later, the third at 7.49 seconds, and the fourth at 8.31 seconds (allowing for an error of about 5% in the Dictabelt’s running speed). The brevity of the pause between the first and second shots, both fired from the rear, raised questions as to whether one lone gunman could possibly have fired both. That issue will be dealt with later, along with the question as to whether more than one assassin fired from the rear.

A fractional pause between the third shot, from the knoll, and the fourth, from the rear—acoustics study or no acoustics study—could explain a great deal. With less than a second between them, the two shots could have sounded like one to those who believed only three were fired altogether. It would also make sense of the comments of two of those in the target area and best placed to hear the gunfire. It would explain Governor Connally’s impression that someone was shooting with an automatic rifle, Agent Greer’s observation that the last shot was “just right behind” its predecessor, and Agent Kellerman’s recall of a “double bang”—like the sound barrier being broken. Kellerman may have been right in his belief that there were more than three shots.

The acoustics work suggested that all but the third shot originated “in the vicinity of the sixth-floor southeast corner window of the
Texas School Book Depository.” The experts wondered though, whether further tests might indicate that some of the shooting had come from the Daltex Building next door.

The most refined study was reserved for the third shot, because the Committee was acutely aware of the need to resolve whether there had really been a sniper on the knoll. The acoustics study concluded that the third shot was “fired from a point along the east-west line of the wooden stockade fence on the grassy knoll, about eight feet west of the corner of the fence” (see Photos 5, 6). Professor Weiss and his colleagues suggested it was certain the shot had come from behind the fence—allowing for a margin of error of five feet in either direction. A mass of evidence seemed, at last, to fall into place.

Onetime Congressman, later President, Gerald Ford served on the Warren Commission and wrote afterward, “There is no evidence of a second man, of other shots, or other guns.” That was not so, even in 1964.

Of the 178 witnesses whose statements were available to the Warren Commission, 49 believed the shots came from the Texas School Book Depository, 78 had no opinion, and 30 came up with answers that do not mesh with the rest of the evidence; 21, though, believed the shots had come from the grassy knoll. Another sample of the statements suggests 61 witnesses believed that at least some of the gunfire originated in front of the motorcade. A number of others said as much in statements to newspapers or private researchers.
1
Few of these witnesses were called to testify.

Here are the opinions of the fifteen people in the immediate target area, where the experts say sound impressions are least distorted. Of those in the car, Mrs. Kennedy had no opinion on where the shots came from. Governor Connally—injured before the
fatal shot—thought he heard shooting behind him. His wife said on one occasion that she believed all shots came from the rear, on another, “I had no thought of whether they were high or low or where. They just came from the right.” Agent Greer, the driver, said the shots “sounded like they were behind me.” Agent Kellerman said only that his main impression was of sound to the right—perhaps to the rear. Two police outriders to the left rear of the car, the two splattered with blood and brain, had no idea where the shooting originated. Those at the eye of the storm were hardly well placed for rational recall.

The two policemen to the President’s right rear, very close to him, were excellently placed. One of them, Officer James Chaney, closest to the President, thought some of the shooting came from “back over my right shoulder.” He also said, however, that “when the second shot came, I looked back in time to see the President struck in the face by the second bullet.”

Kennedy’s close aide, Kenneth O’Donnell, was traveling in the car immediately behind the presidential limousine. He testified that he thought, “in part” based on “reconstruction,” that the shooting had come from the rear. “In part”? O’Donnell later told a friend, House Speaker Tip O’Neill, that he had been pressured by the FBI not to say what he firmly believed, that gunfire had come from in front of the motorcade.

Mary Moorman, to the passenger side of the limousine, and busy taking pictures, could not tell where the shots came from. Maurice Orr, opposite her, was also too confused. Charles Brehm, not far away, said in a formal statement that shots came from behind him. On the day of the assassination, however, he was reported as saying he thought “the shots came from in front of or beside the President.” On the other side of the street, standing on the grass with their children, were William and Gayle Newman. Mr.
Newman’s affidavit, sworn just after the assassination, said, “I was looking directly at him when he was hit in the side of the head… . I thought the shot had come from the garden directly behind me, that was on an elevation from where I was right on the curb. Then we fell down on the grass as it seemed we were in the direct path of fire.” The Commission omitted both Newman statements from its “Witnesses” section.

Sixteen people in or outside the Book Depository, behind the President, suggested that some shooting came from the knoll. They included the Depository manager, the superintendent, and two company vice presidents. Secret Service Agent Forrest Sorrels, traveling in the lead car and nearing the end of the knoll at the moment of the fatal shot, stared instinctively at the knoll. He first reported, “I looked toward the top of the terrace to my right as the sound of the shots seemed to come from that direction.” Only later, in his Commission testimony, did Sorrels go along with the conventional wisdom that the source of the gunfire was exclusively to the President’s rear.

Secret Service agent Paul Landis, in the car behind the President, made an interesting distinction. He said, “I heard what sounded like the report of a high-powered rifle from behind me.” Landis drew his gun, and then, “I heard a second report and saw the President’s head split open and pieces of flesh and blood flying through the air. My reaction at this time was that the shot came from somewhere toward the front … and looked along the right-hand side of the road.” Landis was not called to testify before the Warren Commission.

Several police officers also thought the shots came from the knoll area. The reaction of Dallas County Sheriff Bill Decker, riding in front of the President, was to bark into the radio, “Notify station 5 to move all available men out of my department back into the
railroad yards.” The railroad yards were just behind the fence—where the Committee acoustics experts placed a gunman.

Loosely speaking, the “grassy knoll” refers to the whole area the President’s limousine passed after leaving the Book Depository to its rear (see page 999). It is easiest to describe it as three sectors. First a narrow slope topped by trees and bushes. Then a much longer slope up to a semicircular colonnade, with access steps and a retaining wall. Beyond that, the slope continued beside the road, topped by more vegetation and a fence. The fence made a right angle, which, in 1963, faced directly toward the oncoming motorcade. By the last stage of the shooting the President’s limousine was a mere thirty-five yards from the point on the fence where Committee acoustics experts placed a gunman.

About a dozen people were on the grassy knoll when the President was shot, and almost all believed some of the gunfire came from behind them, high up on the knoll itself. For several, there could be no talk of illusions or echoes. The shooting was frighteningly close. Their stories, for the most part, never heard by the first official inquiry, are jolting even after fifty years.

Gordon Arnold, a young soldier of twenty-two, was home on leave on November 22. Armed with his movie camera, he was to claim, he walked to the top of the grassy knoll just before the President arrived, looking for a good vantage point. He went behind the fence, looking for a way to get to the railroad bridge that crossed the road directly in front of the motorcade route. From there, his view would be perfect. Arnold was moving along the fence—on the side hidden from the road—when “… this guy just walked towards me and said that I shouldn’t be up there. He showed me a badge and said he was with the Secret Service and that he didn’t want anybody up there.” It sounded sensible enough, and
Arnold retreated to the next best spot—beside a tree on the road side of the fence, high on the grassy slope beyond the colonnade. Then the motorcade arrived.