Crossfire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy (15 page)

During late 1963 and early 1964, it was widely reported that the first
shot struck Kennedy in the back, the second bullet hit Connally, and the
third was the fatal head shot. This was a consistent theory of three bullets. Tague's story of yet another bullet was totally inconsistent with the loneassassin/three-shot theory being formulated by the Warren Commission,
which initially appears to have been prepared to ignore both Tague and the
bullet mark on the curb.

In fact, there may have been an effort to eliminate the evidence. In late
May 1964, about a month before the Warren Commission finally talked to
Tague, the car salesman took a camera to Dealey Plaza to photograph the
mark on the curb. He was surprised to find that it was not there. Only faint
traces of the bullet mark were found. Tague said it looked as if someone
had tried to repair the curb.

Apparently it was a letter from an assistant U.S. attorney in Dallas that
finally prompted the Warren Commission to confront the Tague wounding.
Martha Jo Stroud mailed a letter to Commission general counsel J. Lee
Rankin on June 9, 1964. In the letter was the comment:

I am enclosing a photograph made by Tom Dillard of the Dallas
Morning News. It is a shot of the curb which was taken shortly after the
assassination on November 22, 1963. When I talked to Mr. Dillard
yesterday he indicated he did not know whether the photograph was
material. He did say, however, that he examined the curb when the
photo was taken and that it looked like a piece of lead had struck it.

Faced with this official notification of the curb shot, the Commission
was stirred to action. On July 7, 1964, the Warren Commission asked the
FBI to look into the matter. In an FBI document dated July 17, the FBI
stated: "The area on the curb [where the bullet or fragment hit] was
carefully checked and it was ascertained there was no nick in the curb in
the checked area, nor was any mark observed."

The disappearance of a mark that had been plainly seen eight months
earlier was explained in this document:

It should be noted that, since this mark was observed on November 22,
1963, there have been numerous rains, which could have possibly
washed away such a mark and also that the area is cleaned by a street
cleaning machine about once a week, which could also wash away any
such mark.

But if the FBI could ignore the mark, the Commission could not. Since
both a Dallas policeman and a sheriff's deputy had mentioned Tague in
their reports, although not by name, and after the arrival of Stroud's
letter, his story could no longer be ignored.

On July 23, 1964, Tague finally was deposed in Dallas by Commission
attorney Wesley Liebeler.

Following Tague's testimony, the Commission again asked the Bureau to
investigate the matter. This time the FBI removed the piece of curb in question and took it to Washington for analysis. In an August 12, 1964,
report signed by J. Edgar Hoover, it was stated:

Small foreign metal smears were found adhering to the curbing section
within the area of the mark. These metal smears were spectrographically
determined to be essentially lead with a trace of antimony. No copper
was found. The lead could have originated from the lead core of a
mutilated metal-jacketed bullet such as the type of bullet loaded into 6.5
millimeter Mannlicher-Carcano cartridges or from some other source
having the same composition . . . The absence of copper precludes the
possibility that the mark on the curbing section was made by an
unmutilated military-type full metal-jacketed bullet . . . Further, the
damage to the curbing would have been much more extensive if a rifle
bullet had struck the curbing without first having struck some other
object. Therefore, this mark could not have been made by the first
impact of a high-velocity bullet.

So the FBI, which at first had stated no bullet hit the curb now said the
mark had to have been made by a rifle bullet. If the FBI is correct-and
keep in mind the many instances of misinformation and omission by the
Bureau regarding assassination evidence-the mark on the curb could only
have been made by the lead fragment of a bullet.

Yet the only one that could have lost such an amount of lead is the final
head shot and that was at a location more than 200 feet away, a considerable distance for a small fragment to travel and still impact the curb as
described.

If the bullet mark on the curb was a miss, it was an incredible miss. If
the shot that struck the Main Street curb came from the Texas School Book
Depository's sixth floor, it must have missed Kennedy by thirty-three feet
in the air and twenty-one feet to the right. Such a miss is hardly compatible with the claim that Oswald was able to hit home with two out of three
shots from his inefficient rifle aiming at a target moving laterally and away
from him at about two hundred yards.

Another possibility, never considered by the Warren Commission, was that
the mark was made by a lead bullet without copper jacketing. But of course,
this would indicate different ammunition and perhaps a different rifle from
the one allegedly used by Oswald. Or perhaps the curb was hit by a large
fragment of bullet that had already struck the street (recall the witnesses
who saw one do just that) and had separated from the copper jacket.

Whatever the truth of the curb bullet, and despite the attempt to ignore
this evidence, the matter of the wounding of Tague was finally acknowledged and the Warren Commission was compelled to construct a scenario
of the assassination that included the "single-bullet theory," a theory that
has not been accepted by a majority of Americans.

Despite immediate attempts to establish the Texas School Book Depository as the sole location from which shots were fired, public attention,
both in 1963 and even today, continued to be drawn to the wooded area to
the west of the Depository that has become known as the Grassy Knoll.

[Policemen were] running right behind me ... in the line of the shooting.

-Assassination witness Abraham Zapruder

Probably no small section of land in the United States has been the
object of more controversy than that small portion of Dealey Plaza known
as the Grassy Knoll.

While Elm Street and two large grassy areas of Dealey Plaza dip down
approximately 24 feet as one travels the 495 feet from Houston Street on
the east, the Grassy Knoll remains at ground level.

There actually are two grassy knolls on both the north and south sides of
the west end of the plaza, but during the assassination of President John F.
Kennedy, it was the north knoll that drew public attention.

Located between the Texas School Book Depository and the Triple
Underpass, the Grassy Knoll provided an ideal ambush site. Running
along the top of the knoll was a wooden picket fence about five feet high.
In front of this fence were shrubs and evergreen trees which, even in late
November, provided a leafy canopy over the fence. The fence ran east
approximately seventy-five feet from the north edge of the Triple Underpass, then turned north for about fifty feet, ending in a parking area behind
a concrete pergola located to the west of the Depository.

It was from a vantage point atop a low concrete wall on the south end of
this pergola that the most famous home movie of all time was made-the
Abraham Zapruder film.

A twenty-two-second, 8mm film made on November 22, 1963, became the cornerstone of investigations, both public and private, in the
years after the Kennedy assassination. It has been regarded as the most
objective, and thus most important, piece of evidence in the attempts to
unravel what actually happened to President Kennedy. And it almost didn't
happen.

Abraham Zapruder, a ladies' dress manufacturer with offices at 501 Elm
Street in downtown Dallas near Jack Ruby's nightclub, had not intended to film that day. What with his work and the morning rains, Zapruder thought
"I wouldn't have a chance even to see the President." But his secretary,
Lillian Rogers, urged him to make use of his new camera-a Bell &
Howell 8mm camera with a telephoto lens. So Zapruder made a fourteenmile round-trip drive to his home to pick up his camera. By the time he
returned, crowds were already gathering to watch the motorcade.

After trying several different locations-none of which proved suitable
for viewing the President without obstructions-Zapruder finally climbed
onto a four-foot-high concrete block at the end of two steps leading to the
pergola on the Grassy Knoll. He almost lost his balance while testing his
camera on some nearby office workers, so he asked one of the group, his
receptionist Marilyn Sitzman, to join him and provide steady support.
From this excellent vantage point, Zapruder and Sitzman watched the
motorcade approach Elm Street. Having set the camera's speed control on
"run" and his lens on "telephoto," Zapruder proceeded to film the entire
assassination sequence.

The film must be seen run in its entirety for a viewer to actually receive
its maximum impact. But, in synopsis, the film shows:

The motorcade curves onto Elm and begins moving slowly toward the
camera. President Kennedy and his wife are smiling and waving to
opposite sides of the street. Then the presidential limousine disappears
for a brief second behind a freeway sign and when it emerges, Kennedy
is already reacting to a shot. He clenches his fists and brings both up to
his throat. He does not appear to say anything, but only remains stiff
and upright, sagging slightly to his left. Connally turns to his right,
apparently trying to see behind him, then begins to turn back to his left
when he freezes. His hair flies up and his mouth opens. He is obviously
struck by a bullet. Mrs. Kennedy meanwhile has placed her hand on her
husband's arm and is looking at him horrified as he continues to sag
toward her. Seconds go by and, by now, Kennedy is bent slightly
forward. Suddenly, after an almost imperceptible forward motion of his
head, the entire right side of his skull explodes in a halo of blood and
brain matter. Kennedy is slammed violently backward to the left rear
where he rebounds off the back of the seat and falls toward the car's
floor. Mrs. Kennedy climbs onto the trunk of the limousine in an effort
to grab something while a Secret Service agent leaps onto the rear of the
car, which finally begins to accelerate.

On July 22, 1964, Zapruder told the Warren Commission: "I heard the
first shot and I saw the President lean over and grab himself like this
[holding his left chest area]."

His testimony is very pertinent because the Warren Commission, in its
attempt to prove a lone assassin fired from the sixth floor of the Depository, stated:

.. . the evidence indicated that the President was not hit until at least
frame 210 and that he was probably hit by frame 225. The possibility of
variations in reaction time in addition to the obstruction of Zapruder's
view by the sign precluded a more specific determination than that the
President was probably shot through the neck between frames 210 and 225.

By placing the moment of the first shot at the point where Kennedy was
out of Zapruder's sight behind the sign, the commission moved the shot
closer to the visual effect of a strike on Connally, buttressing the "single
bullet" theory. By moving the time of the shot forward, the Commission
also abolished the worrisome problem of how an assassin in the sixth-floor
window could have accurately fired through obscuring tree branches.

The problem with the Commission's scenario of a hit between frame
210 and 225, of course, is that Zapruder claims he saw Kennedy react to
the first shot, which had to have happened before he disappeared from
camera view.

Zapruder went on to tell the Commission that following the shooting, he
saw some motorcycle policemen "running right behind me . . . in the line
of the shooting." He said: "I guess they thought it came from right behind
me." When asked where he thought the shots came from, Zapruder
replied: "... I also thought it came from back of me."

In fact, during his testimony, Zapruder indicates on four separate occasions that he thought shots came from behind him in the direction of the
picket fence on the Grassy Knoll.

But then Commission Attorney Wesley J. Liebeler asked Zapruder,
"But you didn't form any opinion at that time as to what direction the
shots did come from actually?" Zapruder-who by this time was fully
familiar with the public position that Oswald had fired three shots from the
Depository-replied, "No."

Zapruder, who was very shaken by the assassination, noted that there
was considerable reverberation in Dealey Plaza at the time. He said he did
not remember jumping down from the cement block and crouching for
cover inside the white pergola with Sitzman (as determined by photographs
taken at the time) nor going back to his office. He only recalled walking
back up Elm Street in a daze, yelling: "They shot him, they shot him, they
shot him."