PAGE & 20/20 (ABC), August 27, 1993 MAN: (?] The President of the United States, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, is dead. Let us pray. \ 7 SHERR: The official version of what happened is that from that sixth-floor corner window, acting alone, Lee Harvey Oswald fired three shots, the third of which ended the life of America's 35th president. But that's too simple an explanation for a great many Americans, and for conspiracy theorists, far too convenient that one man alone did it. Doubters insist that the shot or shots that killed the President came from behind that fence on the grassy knoll, or from a railroad overpass just beyond. _MARK LANE, Author/Attorney: Shots came from at least two directions. A bullet hit the President in the back. A bullet hit him in the throat. It came from the front. A bullet hit him in the head. It came from the front. That was three shots. At least one bullet hit: Governor Connolly (sp?1, One bullet missed, struck the curb. | SHERR: Cvoice-over] Attorney/author Mark Lane, one of the most persistent and prolific of conspiracy theorists, has long insisted that the Warren Commission was wrong, and covered up critical evidence that might make it possible to identify the President's assassins. ( Mr. LANE: Today, with hundreds of thousands of documents in the vaults of the CIA, the DI (?], and the FBI and the National Archives - which we can't see -- the cover-up is continuing. SHERR: Cvoice-over] But another lawyer-turned-author, Gerald Posner, says evidence available to researchers and conspiracy buffs for years led him directly to the only person who could possibly have shot the President. GERALD POSNER, Author, ‘Case Closed': Lee Harvey Oswald killed Jack Kennedy, acting alone. . SHERR: Cvoice-aver] Posner, author of Case Closed, the culmination of a three-year, exhaustive reexamination of the Kennedy assassination, concedes that in identifying a familiar culprit, he's not likely to win over many conspiracy buffs. But he says the evidence didn't allow for any other suspects. Mr. POSNER: Mast people who have written conspiracy books started with their conclusion already done. They knew it was a conspiracy in their heart, and they went around to prove that case. SHERR: Cvoice-over] One of the major assassination controversies Posner seeks to ~ resolve is the number of shots fired, where they came from, and which ones Struck the President. Using recently-developed computer enhancements of the home movie taken by Abraham Zapruder, Posner explained for 20/20 how he says he was able to count the shots, for which he says Oswald had more time than the Warren Commission believed. | Mr. POSNER: Oswald's first shot, which missed, was fired much earlier than anyone realized - just after the car turned the corner. Evidence of this is overlooked by most experts. It's in the film. In the upper righthand carner of your screen, you'll see a little girl. She's heard that shot and turned. In the ~ car, the President and Mrs. Kennedy and the Governor also heard the. shot and -EXIS:NEXIS @ LEXIS: ‘NEXIS €$ LEXIS: ‘NEXIS HRVIOGE. Df MdaaicDatas Canteal? inc. Page
PAGE 9 20/20 (ABC), August 27, 1993 turned. After this shot, Oswald, still had aver eight seconds, not five, for the next two. The second shat is fired. This bullet hits both Kennedy and Connolly. After passing through Kennedy, you see it go through the Governor, aS his suit lapel flaps forward. A computer technician discovered that crucial detail just last year. SHERR: [voice-over] This is the so-called ‘magic bullet’ that seemed to zigzag through the two men. , Mr. POSNER: This computer animation illustrates that the second bullet needed no magic. Because of the way the two men were lined up, this bullet passed directly through them. It turned only after it slowed down and shattered Connolly's wrist — - no zigs, no zags. : SHERR: How could that bullet have emerged so clean, with no flaws on it, really, whatsoever? . ; Mr. POSNER: I was skeptical about that bullet, and I think that was the thing that stops many people from believing Oswald did it alone. It emerged so clean because that it went through Kennedy, it slowed up. When it went through Connolly's chest, it slowed up. By the time it hit the big bone in his wrist, which everybody thinks would damage it, it was traveling at half or a third of its speed - fast enough to crush the bone, but not fast enough to deform the bullet. SHERR: Cvoice-over] The sudden backward motion of the President's head as the third and final bullet struck, blowing away part of his skull, has led many to believe that the shot came from the front, but Posner says normal neurological reflexes make the body stiffen when. struck, causing it to move back. And Dr. Pepper Jenkins, one of the physicians attending the President at Parkland Hospital, points to yet another possible factor, the brace President Kennedy wore for his chronic back pain. Dr. PEPPER JENKINS: He was so tightly wound into a brace that- the metal coming up his back, and he was tied to the metal or strapped to the metal with an Ace bandage. SHERR: In the Zapruder film and in all the pictures we've seen- well, how do you describe what the body is doing, having seen the brace? Dr. JENKINS: Well, I would think you couldn't fall forward. I think you'd have to fall backwards or aside. SHERR: Because? Dr. JENKINS: Because the brace held him in such a position. 2nd NEWSCASTER: [7] At approximately one o'clock, the President is dead. The doctors were working too frantically to revive him ta notice the exact moment. SHERR: [voice-over] Dr. Jenkins also has a very poignant memory of Mrs. Kennedy sometime standing next to him. LEXIS:NEXIS@= LEXIS:NEXIS#= ~LEXIS*NEXIS@= Barvicessof Mead Wate -Genthalncpage 67
PAGE 19 20/20. (ABC), August 27, 1993 Dr. JENKINS: She had such a drawn look. I really feel like she was in shock, and she was just holding her hands, one above the other. And one of the times, she nudged me with her elbow and handed me something in her hand, which is part of his brain that obviously was in her lap- with his head in her lap as the car came to Parkland. Bad moment. . SHERR: Cvoice-over] After examining computer animation of the presidential limousine and its passengers, Posner sought to show where in Dealey Plaza, the shots came from. Mr. POSNER: Kennedy and Connolly are placed into computer animation, and working back from their wounds, the computer determines the only possible location for the assassin, as indicated by the yellow shading. Notice that Oswald's sixth-floor window is right in the center of it. Mr. LANE: Posner believes the magic-bullet theory. Next, I guess, we're going ta hear about the Tooth Fairy. It's just mathematically impossible. No one has ever been able to recreate what it is said that Lee Harvey Oswald did. SHERR: Well, they've done it- he's done it now with a computer enhancement- Mr. LANE: I know that. SHERR: -and he claims the computer shows that it's absolutely the way it happened. Mr. LANE: Well, he's entitled to his computer. The American people were there, and they testified, and two-thirds of them said they know shots came from the wooden fence. SHERR: [voice-over] What about that reported fourth shot fired from the grassy knoll? When the House Select Committee on Assassinations concluded in 1978 that there was a 9S-percent certainty of such a shot, conspiracy theorists were heartened, but the committee's finding, according to Dallas Sheriff Jim Bowles {sp?]1, was based on a static-filled Dictabelt recording of a Dallas police motorcycle radio stuck in the on position. The sheriff says the motorcycle wasn't even in Dealey Plaza, but the committee heard four shots. We couldn't hear any. Cinterviewing] You have a copy of that tape, right? Sheriff JIM BOWLES, Dallas: I certainly dao. SHERR: Why don't you play it, and let's take a listen. Is that a shot? ‘Sheriff BOWLES: No, that's the motorcycle slowing down, see? SHERR: I didn't hear any shots. Sheriff BOWLES: Neither has anyone else. They listened to the same belts we listened to, and they claimed to hear four shots. SHERR: So where do you think the four shots came from on the House Select Committee's tape? LEXIS*NEXIS@ LEXIS:NEXIS# ~—LEXIS:NEXIS@ narviggs PF Mead Pata, Gepyab INCp sce 66
20/20 (ABC), August 27, 1993 Sheriff BOWLES: You have to ask then. Hr. POSNER: They clearly went down the wrong path. The National Academy of Sciences reviewed their work later, and pointed out all the flaws in it. They just made an error on that Dictabelt. There is no fourth shot. There's no shot at all, even, to hear. SHERR: Even if people accepted’ the physical evidence gathered here in Dealey Plaza, and agreed that it tended to support the Warren Commission's findings, that would not end the speculation. Surveys show that most Americans doubt that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone, believing instead that he was either part of or himself became a victim of a conspiracy. LEE HARVEY OSWALD: I didn't shot anybody, no, sir. 3rd NEWSCASTER: C7] Oswald has been shot! SHERR: What about the Ruby- the Jack Ruby-organized crime cannectian? Clearly, there was a connection there. Mr. POSNER: No question. As a matter of fact, I ‘think the Warren Commission underplayed Jack Ruby's organized. crime connections. SHERR: Isn't there some evidence, then, that he might have been acting on their behalf. to wipe out Oswald? Mr. POSNER: Right. No. If he had a contract from organized crime, why didn't he shoot Oswald when he saw.him for the first time two days earlier? On the day Ruby finally killed Oswald, it was only by chance that their paths crossed. He was not acting on behalf of organized crime. He was acting for his own wotivation, this desire, as he thought, to be a hero in Dallas, that he would erase the stain and the stigma attached to the city that had’been done by the - President's murder. SHERR: You're Saying Jack Ruby acted.all by himself,.a lane-gunman theory once. again? Mr. POSNER: Without any doubt. SHERR: £voice-over] Posner also explained | his views an the many conspiracy theories about the assassination. ROBERT F. KENNEDY: Did you say, ‘That 5.0.B., I'll break his back'? JIMMY HOFFA: Who? tr. KENNEDY: You. Mr. HOFFA: Who's the ‘who'? SHERR: The Mafia wanted the President killed, because that would get rid of Bobby Kennedy, who was going after organized crime... Mr. POSNER: I would not be surprised if the Mafia, in 1942 or ‘43, sat at a -EXIS:NEXIS@ ~— LEXISNEXIS LEXIS: ‘NEXIS = rarvisea oft Mead: Dates entra inc.Page 69