Word: oswald
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...volumes of raw evidence now served to engender uncertainty and skepticism. Epstein demonstrated that the Commission had worked hastily, arbitrarily dismissed testimony that contradicted its overriding conclusion, and given only reluctant and far from unanimous approval to a dubious theory that later proved fundamental in the case against Oswald as the lone assassin...
This theory -- developed by junior staff counsel Arlen Specter -- speculated that the first bullet fired by Oswald passed through Kennedy's neck, then hit Governor Connally's back and exited through his chest, damaging his right wrist and left thigh successively. Epstein discloses that three Commission members -- Senators Russell and Cooper and Representative Boggs -- disbelieved Specter's hypothesis from the outset. But the Report papered over this difference of opinion with the assertion that the single-bullet theory "is not necessary to any essential findings...
Eight-millimeter film of the assassination taken by Abraham Zapruder indicated that Kennedy and Connally received their wounds in a space of time too short to allow Oswald's gun to be fired twice. Thus the single bullet theory is in fact critical to the whole version of events propounded in the Warren Report. If Kennedy and Connally were struck by separate bullets, either there was a second sniper or the Commission's chronological reconstruction of the assassination was inaccurate...
...theory behind the Report's conclusions, they affirm, is implausible given the evidence available. All that can be said now for the Report is that no concrete evidence points to the existence of a second sniper; but neither has any internally consistent theory yet been presented to explain how Oswald alone killed Kennedy...
...shots, Specter points out that the film is two-dimensional, and it is impossible to know-"precisely"-when Kennedy was first hit. The President, too, may have had a delayed reaction, and since scant fractions of a second are involved, there is a possibility that there was time for Oswald to shoot twice. Nevertheless, Specter argues that an even more convincing point was the fact that no bullet was found in Kennedy's body or in the limousine. "Where, if it didn't hit Connally, did that bullet go?" asks Specter. "This is the single most compelling reason...