Crossfire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy (91 page)

In the hours following the assassination, this pile of evidence grew to
include a rifle, empty shell cases, a "sniper's nest" and even a convincing-if
belated-palm print on the suspected murder weapon.

The rapid accumulation of evidence prompted Dallas County district
attorney Henry Wade to proclaim to the media he had an open-and-shut
case against Lee Harvey Oswald the day after the shooting. After Oswald's
death on Sunday, Wade was even more adamant. The Dallas Times
Herald of November 25, 1963, stated:

The Red propaganda mills had been grinding out angry report after
report declaring Oswald was being made a scapegoat for a crime he did
not commit. "Oswald was the man who fired the gun that took the life
of our President. History will record it as such," the district attorney
said in answer to the Kremlin's propagandists.

However, a long and thoughtful look at most of the evidence reveals just
as many questions and as much confusion as there is concerning the
medical evidence.

The Warren Commission questioned 126 of the 266 known witnesses
either by testimony of affidavit. Regarding the source of the shots, thirtyeight gave no opinion-most were not asked-thirty-two indicated the
Texas School Book Depository, and fifty-one placed the shots in the
vicinity of the Grassy Knoll. Several believed shots were fired from two
different locations.

Even veteran law-enforcement officers, who should have been expected
to provide expert opinions as to the source of the shots, were divided in
their beliefs. Of the twenty sheriff's deputies watching the motorcade from
in front of the Sheriff's Office, sixteen placed the origin of the shots near
the Triple Underpass, three gave no opinion, and one implied the Depository.
Of the Dallas policemen interviewed, four placed shots from the Grassy
Knoll, four said shots came from the Depository, and four gave no opinion.

It is evident that different witnesses held different beliefs as to the
source of the shots. Supporters of the official version of the assassination
point to this as proof that eyewitness testimony cannot be counted on for
accuracy. Skeptics of the official story say this difference of opinion
indicates shots from different locations.

Today there is evidence that some witnesses were advised-even
pressured-to make their version of the assassination conform to the
official story.

In 1975 a CIA liaison man told congressional investigators that two of
Kennedy's aides, Kenneth O'Donnell and David Powers, initially said
shots came from other than the Depository, but later changed their story
after being warned by J. Edgar Hoover or one of his top aides that such
testimony would only arouse public passions and could lead to an international incident. Both O'Donnell and Powers denied this story when it
appeared in a Chicago newspaper column, but in light of other known
attempts to change witness testimony-that of Senator Ralph Yarborough,
Jean Hill, Phil Willis, etc.-this story cannot be summarily dismissed.

While it is clear that eyewitness testimony cannot be relied on for
unequivocal information, the statements of otherwise ordinary citizens
regarding second gunmen, muzzle flashes, and smoke on the Grassy Knoll
must be considered in any impartial desire to learn the truth.

The best evidence would have been the medical reports. With a competent autopsy, it should have been well established how many bullets struck
Kennedy and from which direction. However, as discussed earlier in
"Two Hospitals," the medical evidence in this case continues to be a
source of controversy-filled with inconsistencies, errors, missing items,
and photographs of questionable origin. About all one can say of the
medical evidence is that Kennedy was shot at least twice.

So it remains for other pieces of evidence-ballistic and physical
evidence-to prove the official version of the assassination. Unfortunately,
this area, too, is filled with doubts, questions, deceit, and ambiguity.

Some of the first physical evidence to be found was in the Texas School
Book Depository. Many of the press accounts at the time mentioned
fingerprints traced to Lee Harvey Oswald being found on boxes on the
Depository's sixth floor, the shield of boxes around a "sniper's nest" in
the southeast corner of that floor, and the remains of a chicken lunch
discovered nearby.

The presence of Oswald's fingerprints on the sixth floor means nothing,
since he was a Depository employee and by all accounts had worked on
the sixth floor that day.

The stacking of book boxes both around the sixth-floor window and on
the windowsill cannot be used as proof of Oswald's guilt since there is no
proof he placed them and since it is now known that the entire "sniper's
nest" scene was staged for the official photographs.

At least three Warren Commission photographs of the scene-Commis sion Exhibits 509, 724 and 733-show three different versions of the
boxes stacked near the sixth-floor window.

R. L. Studebaker, Dallas police photographer, told the Warren Commission that some of his photos were taken as late as the Monday following
the assassination.

Jack Beers, a photographer for the Dallas Morning News, took pictures
of the "sniper's nest" less than three hours after the assassination. His
photos show yet a different configuration of boxes from that shown in the
Commission photos.

Dallas police lieutenant J. C. Day of the Crime Scene Search Unit
admitted to the Warren Commission that the boxes had been moved
around. In Commission testimony, the following exchange took place
between Day and Commission attorney David Belin:

BELIN: . . . Were those boxes in the window the way you saw them, or
had they been replaced in the window to reconstruct it'?

DAY: They had simply been moved in the processing for prints. They
weren't put back in any particular order.

BELIN: So [the "sniper's nest" photograph] does not represent, so far as
the boxes are concerned, the crime scene when you first came to
the sixth floor, is that correct?

DAY: That is correct.

When Belin showed Day photos of boxes in the sixth-floor window
taken by bystanders in the street moments after the assassination, Day
expressed confusion over the obvious differences in the configuration. He
said: "What I am getting at, this box doesn't jibe with my picture of the
inside . . . I just don't know. I can't explain that box there depicted from
the outside as related to the pictures I took inside." Later in his testimony,
Day suggested that the boxes were moved by someone before he arrived.

So the evidence of the "sniper's nest" is virtually useless since even the
Dallas Police crime scene official stated the boxes had been moved about.

Unfortunately, it was the same story with the three cartridge hulls
reportedly found on the sixth floor. Day said he took two photographs of
the three hulls lying near the sixth-floor window. Two hulls can been seen
lying near to each other on the floor beneath the windowsill while a third is
some distance away. It has been assumed that this was the position of the
hulls. However, today there is evidence that they, too, were moved.

In a 1985 interview with researcher Gary Mack, Tom Alyea gave the
following account:

In 1963 Alyea was a news cameraman for WFAA-TV in Dallas. He
managed to get inside the Texas School Book Depository before it was
sealed by police. As he entered the building, Alyea heard someone
shout, "Don't let anyone in or out!" Alyea reached the sixth floor and filmed Dallas police searching for evidence. He said the federal authorities there were "bent on getting me out of the place" and did not want
him taking any film but his friendly local police contacts allowed him to
stay. Alyea said he noticed shells lying on the floor but couldn't film
them because of book boxes in the way. Noting Alyea's predicament,
Captain Will Fritz scooped up the shells and held them in his hand for
Alyea's camera-then threw the hulls down on the floor. All of this
occurred before the crime scene search unit arrived. Alyea said film of
the shells lying in their original positions on the floor was apparently
thrown out with other unused newsfilm on orders of his WFAA news
director.

If Alyea's account is true (and there's no reason to believe it's not), then
the shells as photographed by the Dallas police were not in their original
positions-but rather where they landed when thrown down by Fritz.

Two lawmen on the sixth floor at the time-deputy sheriffs Roger Craig
and Luke Mooney-have told researchers they saw the three hulls lying
side by side only inches apart under the window, all pointing in the same
direction. Of course this position would be impossible if the shells had
been normally ejected from a rifle. So the evidence of the empty shell
cases is now suspect.

Just as a matter of speculation, it seems incredible that the assassin in
the Depository would go to the trouble of trying to hide the rifle behind
boxes on the opposite side of the sixth floor from the southeast window
and then leave incriminating shells lying on the floor-unless, of course,
the hulls were deliberately left behind to incriminate Oswald.

There is yet another problem with the empty rifle hulls. Although the
Warren Commission published a copy of the Dallas police evidence sheet
showing three shell cases were taken from the Depository, in later years a
copy of that same evidence sheet was found in the Texas Department of
Public Safety files which showed only two cases were found. This is
supported by the FBI receipt for assassination evidence from the Dallas
police that indicates only two shell cases arrived in Washington just after
the assassination.

Reportedly Fritz held on to one of the cases for several days before
forwarding it to the FBI. This breach of the chain of evidence causes
suspicion to be raised about the legitimacy of the third shell. This suspicion is compounded by the fact that while the FBI Crime Lab determined
that two of the hulls show marks compatible with being loaded in Oswald's
rifle, the third showed no such evidence.

In fact, the third hull-designated Commission Exhibit 543-had a dent
on its lip that would have prevented the fitting of a slug. In its present
condition, it could not have fired a bullet on that day.

The FBI determined that CE 543 had been loaded and extracted from a
weapon "at least three times" but could not specify that the weapon belonged to Oswald. (Some researchers speculate this shell may have been
the one used to fire the slug from the Oswald rifle that later turned up at
Parkland Hospital and has been designated as CE399-the "magic bullet.")

However, FBI experts said CE 543 did show marks from the magazine
follower of Oswald's rifle. What went unexplained was how these marks
were made, since the magazine follower marks only the last cartridge in
the clip. This position was occupied by a live round found that day, not by
CE 543.

Again, too many questions arise to accept the shell cases as solid
evidence.

The rifle reportedly belonging to Oswald also is surrounded by controversy and inconsistencies. The rifle found behind boxes on the sixth floor
of the Depository was initially described as a 7.65 mm German Mauser. It
was described thusly by Deputy Sheriff E. L. Boone, discoverer of the
rifle, in his report of that day. Boone's report is supported by that of
Deputy Constable Seymour Weitzman. Both lawmen reportedly had more
than an average knowledge of weapons.

As late as the day after the assassination, Weitzman wrote in a report:

I was working with Deputy Boone of the Sheriff's Department and
helping in the search. We were in the northwest corner of the sixth floor
when Deputy Boone and myself spotted the rifle about the same time.
This rifle was a 7.65 Mauser bolt action equipped with a 4/18 scope, a
thick leather brownish-black sling on it. The rifle was between some
boxes near the stairway. The time the rifle was found was 1:22 P.M.

This account was confirmed by Deputy Craig, who told Texas researchers he actually saw the word Mauser stamped on the weapon's receiver.

When asked about the make of rifle shortly after midnight the day of the
assassination, Dallas District Attorney Henry Wade replied: "It's a Mauser, I believe."

However, by late Friday afternoon the rifle was being identified as a 6.5
mm Italian Mannlicher-Carcano.

While a German Mauser and the Carcano do look somewhat similar,
anyone vaguely familiar with these weapons-Weitzman, Boone, and
Craig should certainly qualify-can distinguish between them. Why the
discrepancies? The Warren Commission indicated that Weitzman was
simply mistaken in his identification of the rifle and that the others,
including Wade, probably repeated this mistaken identification.

However, Wade never gave any indication as to the source of his idea
that the rifle was a Mauser. And Boone told the Commission he thought it
was Captain Fritz who termed it a Mauser.

Asked to identify the Mannlicher-Carcano by Commission Attorney
Joseph Ball, Boone stated: "It looks like the same rifle. I have no way of
being positive."

Weitzman, who managed a sporting-goods store and was considered an
expert on rifles, had identified the gun as a Mauser. He testified to the
Warren Commission only by affidavit and was not asked to identify the
Carcano as the gun he held in the Depository.

Author Sylvia Meagher wrote: "The failure to obtain such corroboration
from Weitzman leaves open the possibility that a substitution of rifles took
place, or that a second rifle may have been found at the Book Depository,
but kept secret."

And consider that Lieutenant Day and another Dallas policeman mentioned writing contemporary descriptions of the rifle, yet neither of these
documents was included in the mass of Warren Commission materials.

Even the CIA had doubts as to the true identity of the assassination rifle.
Five days after the assassination, in an internal report transmitted from
Italy to Langley headquarters, CIA officials noted that two different kinds
of Italian-made carbines were being identified as the single murder weapon.
The CIA document stated: "The weapon which appears to have been
employed in this criminal attack is a Model 91 rifle, 7.35 caliber, 1938
modification . . . The description of a `Mannlicher-Carcano' rifle in the
Italian and foreign press is in error."