Question: How many shots did the acoustic experts claim were fired during the Kennedy assassination?
About the article "Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy", section "Second gunman theory".

Candidate passages:
According to the House Select Committee on Assassinations, a Dictabelt recording of the Dallas Police Department radio dispatch transmissions from November 22, 1963, was analyzed to "resolve questions concerning the number, timing, and origin of the shots fired in Dealey Plaza".
The Committee concluded that the source of the recording was from an open microphone on the motorcycle of H.B.
McLain escorting the motorcade and that "the scientific acoustical evidence established a high probability that two gunmen fired at President John F. Kennedy.
"The acoustical analysis firm hired by the Committee recommended that the Committee conduct an acoustical reconstruction of the assassination in Dealey Plaza to determine if any of the six impulse patterns on the dispatch tape were fired from the Texas School Book Depository or the grassy knoll.
The reconstruction would entail firing from two locations in Dealey Plaza—the depository and the knoll—at particular target locations and recording the sounds through numerous microphones.
The purpose was to determine if the sequences of impulses recorded during the reconstruction would match any of those on the dispatch tape.
If so, it would be possible to determine if the impulse patterns on the dispatch tape were caused by shots fired during the assassination from shooter locations in the depository and on the knoll.
In 1978, at the behest of the House Select Committee on Assassinations, members of the Dallas Police Pistol Team participated in an acoustical reconstruction by firing both rifles and pistols from the locations selected by the researchers.
During the acoustical reconstruction, the Dallas Police marksmen had no difficulty hitting the targets.
The House Select Committee's firearms experts "...testified that given the distance and angle from the sixth floor window to the location of the President's limousine, it would have been easier to use the open iron sights."
The Warren Commission tests had been carried out on the assumption that Oswald, who they and the Committee concluded fired the shots, used the telescopic sight.
An article which appeared in "Science & Justice", a quarterly publication of Britain's Forensic Science Society, found there was a 96% certainty, based on analysis of audio recordings made during the assassination, that a shot was fired from "the grassy knoll" in front of and to the right of the President's limousine.
The acoustical evidence has since been discredited.
Officer H.B.
McLain, from whose motorcycle radio the HSCA acoustic experts said the Dictabelt evidence came, has repeatedly stated that he was not yet in Dealey Plaza at the time of the assassination.
McLain asked the Committee, "‘If it was my radio on my motorcycle, why did it not record the revving up at high speed plus my siren when we immediately took off for Parkland Hospital?’” In 1982, a panel of twelve scientists appointed by the National Academy of Sciences, including Nobel laureates Norman Ramsey and Luis Alvarez, unanimously concluded that the acoustic evidence submitted to the HSCA was "seriously flawed", was recorded after the President had been shot, and did not indicate additional gunshots.
Their conclusions were later published in the journal "Science".
In a 2001 article in the journal "Science & Justice", D.B.
Thomas wrote that the NAS investigation was itself flawed.
He concluded with a 96.3 percent certainty that there were at least two gunmen firing at President Kennedy and that at least one shot came from the grassy knoll.
In 2005, Thomas' conclusions were rebutted in the same journal.
Ralph Linsker and several members of the original NAS team reanalyzed the timings of the recordings and reaffirmed the earlier conclusion of the NAS report that the alleged shot sounds were recorded approximately one minute after the assassination.
In 2010, D.B.
Thomas challenged in a book the 2005 "Science & Justice" article and restated his conclusion that there were at least two gunmen. 
The location of Kennedy's wounds suggested that his assailant had stood behind him, but some witnesses said that Sirhan faced west as Kennedy moved through the pantry facing east.
This has led to the suggestion that a second gunman actually fired the fatal shot, a possibility supported by coroner Thomas Noguchi who stated that the fatal shot was behind Kennedy's right ear and had been fired at a distance of approximately one inch.
Other witnesses, though, said that as Sirhan approached, Kennedy was turning to his left shaking hands, facing north and so exposing his right side.
As recently as 2008, eyewitness John Pilger asserted his belief that there must have been a second gunman.
During a re-examination of the case in 1975, the Los Angeles Superior Court ordered expert examination of the possibility of a second gun having been used, and the conclusion of the experts was that there was little or no evidence to support this theory.
In 2007, analysis of an audio recording of the shooting made that night by freelance reporter Stanislaw Pruszynski appeared to indicate, according to forensic expert Philip van Praag, that at least thirteen shots were fired even though Sirhan's gun held only eight rounds.
Van Praag states that the recording also reveals at least two cases where the timing between shots was shorter than humanly possible.
Van Praag's analysis that the Pruszynski tape reveals the firing of more than eight shots was independently corroborated by forensic audio specialists Wes Dooley and Paul Pegas of Audio Engineering Associates in Pasadena, California, forensic audio and ballistics expert Eddy B. Brixen in Copenhagen, Denmark, and audio specialist Phil Spencer Whitehead of the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, Georgia.
Some other acoustic experts, through their own independent analysis, have stated that they believe no more than eight shots are recorded on the audio tape.
On November 26, 2011, Sirhan's defense attorneys William F. Pepper and Laurie Dusek filed a 62 page brief in Los Angeles federal court which asserts that a bullet used as evidence to convict Sirhan was switched with another bullet at the crime scene.
The brief claims that this was done because the bullet taken from Kennedy's neck did not match Sirhan's gun.
Pepper and Dusek claim that the new evidence presented in their brief is sufficient to prove Sirhan innocent under the law. 
The FBI was the first authority to complete an investigation.
On December 9, 1963, the FBI issued a report and gave it to the Warren Commission.
The FBI stated that three bullets were fired during the Kennedy assassination; the Warren Commission agreed with the FBI investigation that three shots were fired but disagreed with the FBI report on which shots hit Kennedy and which hit Governor Connally.
The FBI report claimed that the first shot hit President Kennedy, the second shot hit Governor Connally, and the third shot hit President Kennedy in the head, killing him.
In contrast, the Warren Commission concluded that one of the three shots missed, one of the shots hit President Kennedy and then struck Governor Connally, and a third shot struck President Kennedy in the head, killing him. 
Within minutes after the shots rang out in Dealey Plaza in downtown Dallas, Texas, at 12:30 p.m. on November 22, 1963, independent sources began reporting that three shots had been fired at the President’s motorcade.
At 12:34 p.m., approximately four minutes after the shots were fired, the first wire story flashed around the world:“DALLAS NOV. 22 (UPI) -- THREE SHOTS WERE FIRED AT PRESIDENT KENNEDY’S MOTORCADE TODAY IN DOWNTOWNDALLAS.
JT1234PCS”This report had been transmitted by United Press International reporter Merriman Smith from a radio telephone located in the front seat of the press car in the Presidential motorcade, six cars behind the President’s limousine.
Smith’s communication with the Dallas UPI office was made less than a minute after the shots were heard, as his car entered the Stemmons freeway en route to Dallas’ Parkland Hospital.
Merriman Smith’s dispatch was the first of many reports.
There were dozens of journalists riding in the motorcade in three open press cars and a press bus, none of whom reported hearing a number of shots other than three.
Photographers Robert Jackson and Tom Dillard riding in a car in the motorcade heard three shots.
"The Dallas Morning News" reporter Mary Woodward described hearing three shots as she stood in front of the Texas School Book Depository.
There has been some controversy over the number of shots fired during the assassination.
The Warren Commission concluded that three shots were fired.
The vast majority of witnesses claim to have heard three, but there are some witnesses who could recall only one or two shots.
A few witnesses thought there were four or more shots.
Of 178 witnesses whose evidence was compiled by the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA), 132 reported hearing exactly three shots, 17 recalled hearing two, 7 said they heard two or three shots (total: 88%).
A total of 6 people said they thought they heard four shots, and 9 said they were not sure how many shots they heard.
Another 7 people said they thought they heard 1, 5, 6, or 8 shots.
Governor Connally, riding in the middle jump seat of the President's limousine in front of the President, recalled hearing the first shot which he immediately recognized as a rifle shot.
He said he immediately feared an assassination attempt and turned to his right to look back to see the President.
He looked over his right shoulder but did not catch the President out of the corner of his eye so he said he began to turn back to look to his left when he felt a forceful impact to his back.
He stated to the Warren Commission: "I immediately, when I was hit, I said, “Oh, no, no, no.” And then I said, “My God, they are going to kill us all.” He looked down and saw that his chest was covered with blood and thought he had been fatally shot.
Then he heard the third and final shot, which sprayed blood and brain tissue over them.
Nellie Connally said she heard the first shot and saw President Kennedy with his hands at his neck reacting to what she later realized was his neck wound.
After the first shot, she heard her husband yell, "Oh, no, no, no" and turn to his right (away from her).
Then she heard a second shot, which hit her husband.
She saw him recoil away from her and saw that he was hit.
She immediately reached over and pulled him toward her into her arms and lay backward.
Then she heard the third and final shot.
Mrs. Connally said she never looked into the back seat of the car after her husband was shot.
According to the single-bullet theory, one shot passed through President Kennedy's neck and caused all of Governor Connally's wounds (he was wounded in the chest, right wrist, and left thigh), and one of the shots must have missed the limousine entirely.
The Connallys never accepted the theory.
While they agreed with the Warren Commission's conclusion that Oswald acted alone, they insisted that all three shots struck occupants of the limousine. 
The sole acoustic evidence relied on by the committee's experts to support its theory of a fourth gunshot (and a gunman on the grassy knoll) in the JFK assassination, was a Dictabelt recording alleged to be from a stuck transmitter on a police motorcycle in Dealey Plaza during the assassination.
After the committee finished its work, however, an amateur researcher listened to the recording and discovered faint crosstalk of transmissions from another police radio channel known to have been made a minute "after" the assassination.
This was supported by the National Academy of Science article.
Further, the Dallas motorcycle policeman thought to be the source of the sounds followed the motorcade to the hospital at high speed, his siren blaring, immediately after the shots were fired.
Yet the recording is of a mostly idling motorcycle, eventually determined to have been at JFK's destination, the Trade Mart, miles from Dealey Plaza.
In 1992, author Bonar Menninger dismissed the committee report as "Blakey's $5 Million Folly".
In 2001, this criticism of the Committee's acoustic evidence was rebutted in a "Science & Justice" article written by D.B.
Thomas, a government scientist and JFK assassination researcher.
He concluded the HSCA finding of a second shooter was correct and that the NAS panel's study was flawed.
Thomas surmises that the Dictaphone needle jumped and created an overdub on Channel One.
The 1981 Committee on Ballistic Acoustics was charged with reviewing the HSCA’s acoustic evidence.
They concluded that the acoustic evidence of conspiracy was invalid.
Donald Thomas who reportedly performed the first independent peer review of the HSCA’s work and who people think was “an expert on acoustic testing” never read Thomas’ own report on his work with the acoustic evidence in which he acknowledges that "he is not an acoustic expert."
In 2003, computer animator Dale Myers used various films from the day of the shooting to plot the locations and speeds of the motorcycle police officers during the assassination, and concluded that no police motorcycles were anywhere near the precise microphone location on Houston Street required by the Committee's acoustic experts.
Myers' study confirmed the same misgivings voiced by HSCA photographic consultant Richard E. Sprague in 1978.
A majority of witnesses who testified on the source of the shots said they came from the direction of the Depository.
However, many witnesses thought the shots came from the direction of the Knoll.
Only five witnesses, from a total of over one hundred, thought the shots came from two directions simultaneously.
"The Mitrokhin Archive--The KGB in Europe and the West", by Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin, documents extensive manipulation by the KGB in creating and fostering conspiracy theories regarding the Kennedy assassination.
The origin of the infamous forged letter, purported to be from Oswald to E. Howard Hunt, remained inconclusive in the final opinion of the Committee, leaving, in the words of Hunt, "an article of faith that I had some role in the Kennedy assassination.
"In 2003, Robert Blakey, staff director and chief counsel for the Committee, issued a statement on the Central Intelligence Agency: ...I no longer believe that we were able to conduct an appropriate investigation of the Intelligence Agency and its relationship to Oswald... We now know that the Agency withheld from the Warren Commission the CIA-Mafia plots to kill Castro.
Had the commission known of the plots, it would have followed a different path in its investigation.
The Agency unilaterally deprived the commission of a chance to obtain the full truth, which will now never be known.
Significantly, the Warren Commission's conclusion that the agencies of the government co-operated with it is, in retrospect, not the truth.
We also now know that the Agency set up a process that could only have been designed to frustrate the ability of the committee in 1976-79 to obtain any information that might adversely affect the Agency.
Many have told me that the culture of the Agency is one of prevarication and dissimulation and that you cannot trust it or its people.
Period.
End of story.
I am now in that camp.