Crossfire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy (109 page)

[There was] no one to remind the on-looking press and the nation that
Blakey's case against Oswald looks as good as it does primarily because
no one with equal staff, budget and time has had the opportunity to take
it in hand, pull open its seams and show the world what it is really made
of. Blakey and the Committee may at the moment enjoy a certain sense
of victory, but their decision to shut down the other side's chances at
rebuttal and rejoinder will eventually work against the credibility of
their results. Another one-sided trial of an undefended Oswald is not
what the people paid $6 million to see.

The Committee also failed to mention the amount of medical evidence
that is still missing.

And-more ominously-some material given to the Committee also
turned up missing. Bill O'Reilly was a news reporter for WFAA-TV in
Dallas. He recalled:

a guy who was [in Dealey Plaza] at the time watching the motorcade. His son found [a bullet]. I can't remember his name. . . . But he
wanted to remain anonymous . . . He gave me this little cylinder. He
said that his son had found it on the ground that day. . . . It was
definitely a slug. And the guy said he definitely dug it out of there... .
It was something I came across and held. And then when the Committee
started, I handed it over to Gaeton [Fonzi]. .. . and I don't think
anything ever came of it. It was a pistol slug, I'm pretty sure. But
again, I'm not positive. . . . But again I am no ballistics expert so it
could have been a rifle slug.

Fonzi recalled getting the slug from O'Reilly. He said:

I wound up with the slug just prior to going with the Committee. I gave
the slug to the chief investigator, Cliff Fenton, with the Committee and
never heard any more of it. I kept asking Cliff whether he turned it over
for analysis or what he did with it. I kept getting noncommittal answers.

Asked about the slug in 1982, Fenton said: "I don't know nothing about
that. The best thing I can tell you is to talk to Rep. Stokes. I don't make
any comment on the Assassinations Committee. . . . You got to forgive
me for that but that's the way I am."

As the Committee closed its public hearings and moved toward presenting its final report in the late fall of 1978, it was apparent that its findings
in regard to the JFK assassination were to parallel those of the Warren
Commission-that Kennedy had been killed by two bullets fired by Lee
Harvey Oswald from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository
and that Oswald had acted alone.

But then Blakey-who had carefully restricted the JFK assassination
investigation to simply a reevaluation of previous evidence-was hoisted
on his own petard.

A scientific study of a Dallas police radio recording revealed solid
evidence that more than one gunman fired on Kennedy in Dallas.

Even before asking for more funding in March 1978, the House Select
Committee on Assassinations already had uncovered a bombshell in the
JFK investigation.

Sophisticated scientific studies of a Dallas police radio recording indi cated that more than one assassin was involved in Kennedy's death. This
evidence, which prompted immediate controversy, destroyed the Warren
Commission's theory of a lone gunman and forced the Assassinations
Committee to completely reverse its findings at the last moment.

The episode began with a problem very familiar to assassination
researchers-an eight-minute "gap" in Dallas police radio broadcasts
during the assassination gunfire.

Apparently a Dallas policeman-a motorcycle officer by the sound of a
nearby motorcycle engine-opened his microphone about two minutes
before the shooting started and left it open for about eight minutes.

In late 1976, researcher Gary Mack-believing that the open microphone had been in Dealey Plaza-obtained a copy of the Dallas police
radio recording. He began studying it for sounds of gunfire. He reasoned
that if the microphone was indeed open in Dealey Plaza, it must have
picked up the sounds of the shots.

By September 1977, he had enhanced the quality of the tape and
concluded there were as many as seven shots indicated in the recording.

In a newspaper interview, Mack said: "I managed to get a tape of the
police broadcasts and I worked on it. . . . There was some distortion
because it was about a 13th-generation tape . . . but it was then that I
realized that the shots were in the tape."

Mack next obtained a copy of the tape closer to the original. He
explained: ". . . finding the precise location of the shots, then, was easy
and [after filtering out much of the motorcycle engine noise] we heard the
first shot . . . a very loud, sharp crack immediately following some
conversation between two policemen.

The existence of the police recording became known to the Assassinations Committee, which then obtained what was thought to be the original
police recording from Dallas police officials. They located it in the possession of a retired police lieutenant.

This original recording-termed a Dictabelt-was turned over to the
acoustics firm of Bolt, Beranek & Newman Inc. for sophisticated scientific
tests. Dr. James Barger, the firm's chief scientist, converted the sounds on
the tape into digitized waveforms to produce a visual picture. The study
also looked into "sequence of impulses," which could determine sharp,
loud noises such as gunshots and subsequent echoes. Barger determined
there were at least six such impulses and asked for further tests, including
an on-site test in Dealey Plaza.

By summer 1978, Blakey was aware that the acoustical scientists supported Mack's contention that the tape showed gunfire from more than one
location. In fact, during their public testimony, the acoustical scientists
stated that there were as many as nine sounds on the Dallas recording
which could not be ruled out as gunshots.

But after the Dealey Plaza testing from two locations, they could only
confirm four shots-one from the Grassy Knoll.

Additionally, the tape showed that one shot came only 1.6 seconds
behind another. Since the FBI had carefully determined that it required at
least 2.3 seconds to fire the Mannlicher-Carcano rifle twice, this was
further evidence of more than one assassin.

Blakey shocked Committee members with this information, and staff
members began to reconsider their conclusions. But not until after the
police tape was turned over to yet another team of acoustical scientists.
Blakey wrote: ". . . it was deemed judicious to seek an independent
review of Barger's analysis before proceeding with the acoustical
reconstruction. "

The tape was then studied by Professor Mark Weiss of Queen's College
of the City University of New York and his associate, Ernest Aschkenasy.
Weiss and Aschkenasy agreed with Barger's findings and also encouraged
on-site testing.

The idea was to create computerized graphic pictures of the sound
patterns of rifle shots in Dealey Plaza and to match them against the
patterns discovered in the police recording.

Beginning at dawn, on Sunday, August 20, 1978, three Dallas police
sharpshooters fired a total of fifty-six live bullets into three piles of
sandbags located along the motorcade route on Elm Street. Rifles were
fired from two locations-the southeast corner of the sixth floor of the
Texas School Book Depository and from behind the wooden picket fence
on the Grassy Knoll.

Interestingly, a .38-caliber pistol also was fired from the Knoll, leading
many researchers to speculate that the Committee must have received
information leading them to believe a pistol may have been used in the
assassination. However, at the time no one could explain why the pistol
was test fired. Dallas police commented they were unaware of the Committee's desire to test fire the pistol until the day before the tests.

It also should be noted that two of the three piles of sandbags were
located in the middle lane of Elm Street, exactly where films show the
presidential limousine. However, one pile-apparently representing one
of the early shots-was located in the far left lane. Asked why it was in
this location, Dallas police sharpshooter Jerry Compton said he could not
get a line of sight on the bags when it was in the center lane due to
intervening tree branches.

Less than a year before these tests, a film crew had worked in Dealey
Plaza producing a network movie entitled The Trial of Lee Harvey Oswald.
The tree that prevented a line of sight between the sixth-floor Depository
window and the location of the first shot had been pruned back to its 1963
size, based on photographs taken the day of the assassination. Compton's
inability to fire at the center lane because of the obstructing tree gave
strong support to researchers who have long claimed that a gunman on the
Depository's sixth floor would have no line of sight to this location.

After the policemen fired their weapons, a line of microphones was moved along the motorcade route recording 432 impulse sequences or
"acoustical fingerprints."

Later, matching up the tape sounds with the test sounds, two of the six
possible shots were ruled out as having been fired from the Depository or
the Knoll-leaving the possibility that shots came from other locations.

This still left four sounds that did match.

After refining their acoustical tests, Weiss and Aschkenasy concluded:
.. with a certainty factor of 95 percent or better, there was a shot fired
at the presidential limousine from the Grassy Knoll. " Barger agreed with
this assessment and added that sound from the Knoll was preceded by an
N-wave, or supersonic shock wave, proving that the sound was that of a
rifle bullet, which is a supersonic missile.

The Assassinations Committee studied photographs taken on November
22, 1963, as well as Dallas police assignments and concluded that the
microphone that recorded the shots was on the motorcycle of Patrolman
H. B. McLain.

Testifying before the Committee, McLain said his was the first
motorcycle to the left of Vice President Johnson's car. He acknowledged that his motorcycle was in the correct location to record the
shots, based on the acoustical studies, and that his microphone often
got stuck in the "on" position.

However, a week after the Committee was disbanded, McLain
suddenly reversed his position, claiming it could not have been his
microphone that relayed the sounds. Stating that he had accompanied
the presidential limousine to Parkland Hospital, McLain told newsmen:
"That wasn't my motorcycle. There would have been a siren on that
Channel 1 all the way to the hospital. Everybody had their sirens on
... you would have heard that on Channel 1. " McLain said he came to
this conclusion belatedly because when he testified to the Committee, he
had not listened to the police recording. However, an assassination photograph showed McLain had lagged behind and was still in Dealey Plaza
after the presidential limousine raced off.

But McLain's criticism of the acoustical findings was just the beginning of a controversy over the acoustical studies and their conclusions.
Not long after the Committee issued its report citing at least four shots
at Kennedy, the FBI publicly disputed the acoustical studies. The
Bureau, in news stories carried nationwide, stated that the findings of
the acoustical scientists and the Committee were "invalid." This announcement prompted Blakey to term the FBI report "a sophomoric
analysis . . . superficial, shoddy and shot full of holes."

However, the controversy was not over.

At the request of the Justice Department-under which is the FBIthe National Science Foundation authorized a $23,360 study of the
acoustical evidence by a National Academy of Sciences panel headed
by Harvard University physics professor Norman S. Ramsey.

The Ramsey panel decided-on the basis of apparent sounds from
police Channel 2 (the motorcade security channel) being found on
Channel I (the regular police channel)-that this "cross talk" meant
the police recordings were unreliable. Ramsey's Committee on Ballistic Acoustics concluded: "the acoustic analyses do not demonstrate
that there was a Grassy Knoll shot . . . [and] do not support a
conclusion that there was a second gunman."

However, in the months following the Ramsey panel's announcement, its findings were called into question by researcher Gary Mackthe originator of the recording study-who pointed out that Ramsey
had based his studies on problems involving the Automatic Gain
Control (AGC) on police Channel 1. The Dallas police radios had no
AGC circuitry at that time, Mack pointed out. Two members of
Ramsey's panel admitted that, if there was no AGC in the Dallas police
radios, their analysis of the tapes would have to be redone.

Well into the mid-1980s the controversy over the acoustical tests
continued, with one expert challenging another expert and one technical argument being resolved only to find yet another waiting.

Keep in mind that there is now evidence to suggest that the Dallas
police recordings may have been edited or otherwise altered while in
the hands of federal authorities in the days following the assassination.
If the tapes were altered, then the entire acoustical controversy has to
go back to square one.

Despite the continuing controversy, the acoustical evidence prompted
a complete turnabout in the official version of the JFK assassination.