Crossfire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy (18 page)

Toward the eastern end of the parking lot, Bowers saw two other men.
He said: "Each had uniforms similar to those custodians at the courthouse." And speaking of the white Impala again, Bowers said:

.. . at the moment of the first shot . . . the car was out of sight behind
this decorative masonry wall in the area.... at the moment of the shots
I do not think that it was in sight. It came in sight immediately
following the last shot.

Bowers then described what he saw following the shots:

At the time of the shooting there seemed to be some commotion, and
immediately following there was a motorcycle policeman who shot
nearly all of the way to the top of the incline. . . . He was part of the
motorcade and had left it for some reason, which I did not know... .
He came up into the area where there are some trees and where I had
described the two men were in the general vicinity of this . . . one of
them was [still there]. The other one, I could not say. The darkerdressed man was too hard to distinguish from the trees. The one in the
white shirt, yes, I think he was.

Asked by Commission attorney Joseph Ball to describe the "commotion" that attracted his attention, Bowers said:

I just am unable to describe rather than it was something out of the
ordinary . . . but something occurred in this particular spot which was
out of the ordinary, which attracted my eye for some reason, which I
could not identify. . . . Nothing that I could pinpoint as having happened that-

Ball interrupted. "Afterwards did a good many people come up there on
this high ground at the tower?" he asked, before Bowers could tell what
caught his attention on the knoll.

In a later filmed interview, Bowers did describe what caught his eye. He
stated:

At the time of the shooting, in the vicinity of where the two men I have
described were, there was a flash of light or . . . something I could not
identify . . . some unusual occurrence-a flash of light or smoke or
something which caused me to feel that something out of the ordinary
had occurred there.

Bowers said after the shooting, "a large number of people" converged
on the parking lot behind the picket fence, including "between fifty and a
hundred policemen within a maximum of five minutes." He added: "[Police] sealed off the area and I held off the trains until they could be examined,
and there were some transients taken [off] at least one train."

One witness who may have encountered one or more of the men Bowers
saw behind the picket fence was Gordon Arnold, who never testified to
either of the federal panels investigating the assassination. On the day of
the assassination, Arnold was a twenty-two-year-old soldier who had just
arrived back in Dallas after Army training. He went downtown to have
lunch when he decided to take movies of the President. Parking his car
near Bowers's railroad tower, Arnold took his movie camera and walked
toward the Triple Underpass. He told this author:

I was walking along behind this picket fence when a man in a lightcolored suit came up to me and said I shouldn't be up there. I was
young and cocky and I said, "Why not?" And he showed me a badge
and said he was with the Secret Service and that he didn't want anyone
up there. I said all right and started walking back along the fence. I
could feel that he was following me and we had a few more words. I
walked around to the front of the fence and found a little mound of dirt
to stand on to see the motorcade. . . . Just after the car turned onto Elm
and started toward me, a shot went off from over my left shoulder. I felt
the bullet, rather than heard it, and it went right past my left ear. . . . I
had just gotten out of basic training. In my mind live ammunition was
being fired. It was being fired over my head. And I hit the dirt. I buried
my head in the ground and I heard several other shots, but I couldn't see
anything because I had my face in the dirt. [His prone position under the
trees on the knoll may explain why Arnold did not appear in photographs taken of the knoll at that time.] I heard two shots and then there
was a blend. For a single bolt action [rifle], he had to have been firing
darn good because I don't think anybody could fire that rapid a bolt
action. . . . The next thing I knew, someone was kicking my butt and
telling me to get up. It was a policeman. And I told him to go jump in
the river. And then this other guy-a policeman-comes up with a gun.
I don't recall if it was a shotgun or what. And he was crying and that
thing was waving back and forth. I felt threatened. One of them asked
me if I had taken any film and I said yes. He told me to give him my
film, so I tossed him my camera. I said you can have everything, just
point that gun somewhere else. He opened it, pulled out the film, and
then threw the camera back to me. All I wanted to do was get out of
there. The gun and the guy crying was enough to unnerve me.

Arnold ran straight back to his car and drove out of the parking area
unchallenged. Two days later, Arnold reported to duty at Fort Wainwright
in Alaska and he did not return for several years.

Arnold's presence on the Grassy Knoll has been questioned by some
researchers because he doesn't appear in photographs taken that day. His position well under the overhanging trees on the Knoll left him in deep
shadow. He was seen, however, by at least one person in the presidential
motorcade. Former senator Ralph Yarborough, who was riding in the same
car as Vice President Johnson, confirmed Arnold's position in 1978 when
he told The Dallas Morning News:

Immediately on the firing of the first shot I saw the man you interviewed [Arnold] throw himself on the ground. He was down within a
second of the time the shot was fired and I thought to myself, "There's
a combat veteran who knows how to act when weapons start firing."

Arnold, later an investigator for the Dallas Department of Consumer
Affairs, did not give his name to authorities and was never questioned by
either the Warren Commission or the House Select Committee on Assassinations, although his account of the assassination appeared in the July 27,
1978, edition of The Dallas Morning News.

Corroboration of Arnold's story may have come in 1982 with discovery
of a figure in the background of a snapshot made at the instant of the fatal
head shot to Kennedy by a woman standing on the south curb on Elm
Street.

Mary Moorman took a now well-known Polaroid picture just as Kennedy was struck in the head. She sold her rights to the photo that day
to United Press International for six hundred dollars. The photo was
never examined nor printed by the Warren Commission, but it was
published widely in newspapers and magazines after the assassination.

For years, researchers pored over the Moorman picture looking for
evidence of a Grassy Knoll gunman. Despite some tantalizingly blurry
objects discovered along the top of the west leg of the picket fence, no
credible photo of a gunman was found.

The House Select Committee on Assassinations did study the picture,
but found it had badly faded and "was of quite poor quality." However,
because of acoustical evidence (see "The House Select Committee on
Assassinations"), the committee recommended ". . . this particular photograph should be reexamined ..."

Then, in 1982, Texas researchers Gary Mack and Jack White began
studying the Moorman photo in light of the experience of Gordon Arnold.
After obtaining a clear slide made from an original, quality copy of
Moorman's photo, Mack and White began studying the bushy area east
from the corner of the fence. It was here they discovered what appeared to
be two figures. Interestingly, the figures appear in the same general area that the House Committee's acoustical tests indicated shots were fired
from, though the sound experts located a shot west of the corner of the
fence, while the figures are north of the corner.

When blown up, the figures are detectable by untrained observers. One
police official even commented that one man seemed to be wearing
"shooter's glasses." The main figure has been dubbed the "badge man"
because he appears to be wearing a dark shirt with a semicircular patch on
the left shoulder and a bright shiny object on his left chest-the exact
configuration of a Dallas police uniform.

Although the "badge man's" hairline, eyes, left ear, and jaw are
visible, his mouth and neck are obscured by a bright flash-apparently the
muzzle blast of a rifle he is holding in the classic rifle-firing position.

After analyzing the photographic blowup as well as making reenactment
photos in Dealey Plaza, Mack and White feel the "badge man" and
perhaps even a companion are standing behind the wooden picket fence
about fifteen feet north from the corner. This places the figure just to the
left of Gordon Arnold's position and to the right and rear of Abraham
Zapruder.

Mack and White tried unsuccessfully to interest a major news organization in financing a scientific analysis of the "badge man" photo. Finally in
1980, a national tabloid agreed to have the blowup studied. White and a
representative from the news magazine flew to the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology, where the photo was subjected to sophisticated computer
enhancement. They were told that, without question, the photo showed a
man firing a rifle.

The next day, however, the chairman of the MIT department involved
suddenly gave all materials back to them and, with no explanation, told
them the school would no longer participate in any study of the photo.

Today, efforts continue to have the photo enlargement further enhanced
by sophisticated means.

The "badge man" blowup was included in "The Men Who Killed
Kennedy," a British television documentary produced in 1988. In this
program, the "badge man" was identified as a professional Corsican
assassin named Lucien Sarti. This documentary, which was nominated for
awards in Britain and shown to millions of people around the world, has
yet to be aired in the United States.

Whatever the end result of a scientific study of the blowup may be, the
collection of supporting evidence indicates that the "badge man" may
indeed have been the Grassy Knoll gunman whom many witnesses in
Dealey Plaza reported sighting on November 22, 1963. The "badge man"
fits the following accounts:

-Gordon Arnold's story of hearing a shot come from his left rear.

-Zapruder's testimony that shots came from his right rear.

-Bowers's testimony that he saw a flash of light and smoke near two
men wearing uniforms near the east end of the fence. He also saw a
man in a white shirt behind the fence moments before Kennedy was
shot.

-The House Select Committee on Assassinations, which placed at least
one shot within ten feet of the fence corner (although on the west leg).

-Jean Hill, who said she saw smoke and movement north of the fence
corner at the moment of the head shot.

-Sam Holland and others who told of finding muddy footprints, cigarette
butts, and mud on a car bumper behind the picket fence minutes after
the shots were fired.

-Numerous witnesses who ran behind the fence but said they only saw
railroad workers and policemen there.

-The testimony of Emmett Hudson, Constable Weitzman, and Officer
Smith, all of whom saw policemen on the knoll when there were none
officially accounted for in that area.

All in all, the photographic blowup of these figures on the knoll may be
the most important evidence yet confirming the existence of assassins on
the Grassy Knoll.

Amazingly, however, no official government agency or major news
organization seems willing to either make a serious study of the Moorman
photo or present it to the general public.

Further evidence of what went on behind the picket fence at the moment
of the assassination can be found in the heretofore untold story of a crucial
witness.

It is strange irony that the one person who apparently witnessed men
with guns behind the wooden picket fence on the Grassy Knoll at the time
of the Kennedy assassination was unable to tell anyone what he saw. Ed
Hoffman of Dallas has been deaf since birth and, as is common with that
disability, he cannot speak. However, this did not prevent him from
attempting to alert authorities to what he saw behind that fence.

Although Hoffman told his family and friends what he saw at the time
and later reported it to the FBI, his story has remained unpublicized over
the years. Finally, in the summer of 1985, he told his story to this author.
It was later substantially confirmed by FBI documents.

Hoffman was twenty-six years old on November 22, 1963, and at
noontime was driving toward downtown Dallas on the Stemmons Expressway when he noticed numerous people lining the freeway. He suddenly
realized that President Kennedy was to motorcade through the city that day, so he stopped his car just north of a railroad bridge across Stemmons
and joined the spectators.