2011-April-22
Overlooked in almost all of the discussions about conspiracy is the truly
remarkable web of relationships between Oswald and various people associated
with the CIA and the government. To argue that these relationships are
not, at the very least, extremely suspicious, is ridiculous.
Note: it's striking that not one of the secret service
agents in the
follow-up car looked up in response to the sound of the first
shot. They looked back and to the right. One of them
looked down and to the left. (In fact, Connally, Kennedy, and
Jacqueline Kennedy all looked briefly to their left just after the first
shot was fired.)
True, that's
where the crowd was. Also true: they did not distinguish a sound
coming from above and back of the limousine.
Even more striking? Governor Connally stated that he immediately
recognized the sound of a high-powered rifle. Why? Because he
had served in the military, as had Kennedy. In fact, watching the film
today, it is easy to imagine that Kennedy's reaction to the sound of the
first shot is that of a man who knows what he just heard and is processing
it.
The Secret Service agents have only one job: detect threats to the life of
the President and take immediate action to protect him. It is very
striking that not a single one of them seemed to have a clue that their job
was calling them on November 22, 1963. In fact, William Greer, the
driver of the limo, famously applied the brakes, as if to make sure
that Oswald or whomever was holding the rifle, got a good shot at the
President.
Rather odd and ironic and strange that the one thing Will Greer should have
been trained for during all his years as a Secret Service agent was how to
react to someone shooting at the President... and how does he react?
He puts on the brakes. It's really amazing.
This is a rambling, improvisational discussion of some elements of the
Kennedy Assassination. Look, it's been a rambling, improvisational
assassination. A good conspiracy theorist is allowed to wander.
A friend of mine is convinced that he Zapruder film shows that Kennedy and
Connally were hit by the same shot. A version of the Zapruder film we
looked at about five years ago seemed, to me, to be ambiguous on the issue.
There are now clearer reproductions of the frames of the Zapruder film
available.
Firstly, it seems reasonable to me that there was a first shot that
missed the limousine entirely, and many if not most of the eye-witnesses
remember it. In fact, Kennedy himself, and Connally, appear to be
startled by the sound and seem to be looking in the direction it came from
just before the first hit.
Kennedy was hit while blocked from Zapruder's view by the Stemmons
Freeway sign. He emerges from the sign beginning to clutch his throat
with his hands, in obvious pain. Connally does not emerge from the
behind the sign puffing his cheeks out and clenching his fist. He
has not yet been hit. And if he has not been hit, there is a
second gunman, because Oswald could not have fired again by frame 234.
Here are links to the critical frames:
Frame 160:
First shot fired, a miss; reactions of people in limo and out.
Poignantly, a young girl (Rosemary Willis, aged 10) running alongside the
limousine stops and looks in the direction of the crowd on the opposite side
of the road. She is on record: she remembers that she stopped running
because she heard the first shot.
Frame 230:
Kennedy is definitely reacting to the throat wound. I don't think
anybody seriously disputes this. Connally may or may not have been hit
by now but if he was hit by the same bullet as Kennedy it is very odd that
he is not reacting at all.
If you watch the Zapruder film in motion, you can see
Connally's sudden, involuntary, abrupt movement a few frames later which could only have come
in response to a shot. If you watch the film in motion, the two
reactions seem almost simultaneous-- but that is partly because Kennedy has
been hidden behind the sign. His reaction obviously started earlier
than Z230. If you examine it frame by
frame-- which, logically, is the way you should look at it to understand
what really happened-- the two reactions are not simultaneous.
Dale Myers, among others with an axe to grind, insists that Connally was
hit by the same bullet, and that his reaction at 234 proves it. But
Kennedy has already been reacting for at least four frames,
probably more. Four frames-- 1/4 of a second-- may not seem like much, but
it is much, much longer than it takes for a bullet to travel through two
bodies. For all practical purposes, Connally's and Kennedy's reactions
should have been at exactly the same instant. Myers has to argue that
Connally's reaction was delayed, even though this bullet struck his ribs and
shattered his wrist bone because Oswald could not have fired two shots between the time that Kennedy
disappears behind the sign and the time he emerges clutching his throat.
And no matter how you cut it, you can't really argue that Connally's reaction
was delayed if he was reacting to the same physical event as Kennedy.
The bullet took out a piece of his rib and shattered his wrist. Connally's jacket puffs forward after Kennedy is already clutching at his throat.
Well, yes you can argue it.... In this age of instant, omnipresent video, we have
seen lots of strange things. We see the driver of the limousine
applying the brakes after hearing a shot. That's about as crazy as you
can get.
There are literally hundreds
of books on the issue but in my mind there is no way around "conspiracy" if Connally was not hit by the same shot
as the one that caused Kennedy's throat or back wound (or both).
Frame 224:
Connally's jacket flips in front of his shirt. This is probably the
point at which Connally was actually hit. Since Kennedy is already
reacting to a shot, it simply is not possible that it was the same bullet.
Frame 236:
Connally is clearly in pain, and his shoulder has dropped. If you jog between the two frames repeatedly, it seems
pretty clear to me that Connally is trying to see what is happening in all
the frames from emergence behind the sign to 230. Somewhere before
234, he has been hit.
Dale Myers, among others, argues that 224 and 225 show Connally being
hit. This page
illustrates the point. Well, no they don't. They slip and
slide around the issue, but the truth is Kennedy had to have been hit
earlier. He is already reacting with his hands to his wound while Connally has not even grimaced yet.
This is consistent with John Connally's own memory of the event.
It's not a slam dunk and people should learn to live with the
uncertainty. You can make a case for 225, but the same arguments--
sudden movement, body twisting, grimace-- apply equally well to 234,
suggesting a third possibility: that Connally was indeed hit by the shot
that made Kennedy's throat wound, but then was hit by a second shot at 234.
Since Kennedy was hit shortly afterwards again, there would have had to have
been two shooters.
However, because Kennedy is already reacting to the shot as he emerges
from behind the Stemmons Freeway sign, it is possible that Connally was hit
immediately after Kennedy. The famous jacket flap-- the movement of
his dark jacket over his white shirt-- argues for it.* Those who are
opposed to a conspiracy theory have to argue that it was the same bullet
because it is impossible for Oswald to have fired two shots in such a short
period of time (perhaps 1/2 second). But it is equally impossible that
the bullet hung in the air for 1/4 second before continuing on to hit Connally. This was one of the first points seized upon by conspiracy
theorists and it remains one of the most persistent.
Politics colours everyone's perceptions of what the facts mean in the
Kennedy assassination. Conservatives know that if there was a
conspiracy, it was their conspiracy. The conspiracy was the expression
of powerful and corrupt institutional forces determined to assert their
control over government in the face of the self-confident, independent,
sophisticated Kennedys.
John Connally's own testimony is that he heard the first shot, and he
thought it hit Kennedy. He didn't hear the second shot which hit him.
That leaves it possible-- if, admittedly, less likely, that two shots were
fired so close together that many witnesses thought they only heard one.
As everyone knows, there would have been an echo. And some witnesses
reported a "flurry" of shots, though most seem to have heard one shot
distinctly, and then a "flurry". In some ways, the reactions
of Kennedy and Connally and Connally's extensive wounds would be better
explained by a "flurry" of shots-- but the Warren Commission, of course,
desperate to economize on assassins, made it all the work of a single
bullet.
*Finally, another
website points out -- eureka! -- that the bullet did not even go
through the jacket lapel in the first place! So what the hell is
that black thing flapping up in front of John Connally's shirt? You
got me. Or maybe it's a kind of fluke combination of his shoulder
going down in pain, the jacket pushed out where the bullet came through, the
momentum of the car..... who knows.
The very last thing I will point out is that it is possible that one shot
hit both Kennedy and Connally at the same instance and for reasons
undiscovered they reacted at different speeds. After all, Kennedy was
President. His reaction time should have been faster. (I'm
kidding.) Connally
was turning. Kennedy was waving. Who knows? It's not the craziest idea in the world.
In either case, I must point out two obvious facts: firstly, the timing of
the the shots does not, in any case, prove that Oswald fired them, or that
he was alone. Secondly, Dale Myers, who glibly asserts that his
"analysis" proves the shots could only have come from the 6th floor window
"sniper's nest" is a total dink and completely discredits himself
on this account. If the conspiracy analysts are ridiculous
sometimes with their assumptions about pristine bullets and manholes and
post-assassination alterations to the body, his
claim that his data about the angle of the shot is so accurate and precise
that he can positively identify the exact window-- as if he didn't know
already know which one it was-- that it came from... it's beyond ridiculous.
Talk about junk science. Why or why could he not have simply
made his point without leaping to a conclusion which can only be political.
The only way to give credibility to a conclusion like that would be if
you could take the raw information about the assassination, the physical
properties of the car and the road and the buildings, give this information
to a scientist who had never even heard of the Kennedy assassination, and
ask him to please try to determine where the shots came from.
I'll bet he would not come back with "exactly" this or that or anything.
Although, it would be pretty funny, and not to Dale Myers, if he came back
with: behind the car, about 6th floor, in some kind of book
depository.
And he
still cannot prove that Oswald acted alone (or that he even acted, other
than to flee when he realized he had been set up) and he
should know that and stick to what he can or cannot prove-- not to the grand
conclusion he really cares about. Given the incompetence of the
investigation-- which all a conspiracy really needs to succeed-- we will
probably never know the truth. And that's probably the way the real
powers that be like it.
