Features: The Warren Commission, The Truth, and Arlen Specter: Part 2

Father Oscar Huber, the priest who administered the last rites to the President, said he noticed a "terrible wound" over his left eye. The New York Times carried a report on November 23rd of a Canadian visitor to Dallas named Norman Similas who said he was standing near the President’s car at the time of shooting, "I could see a hole in the President’s left temple and his head and hair were bathed in blood," he said. Associated Press photographer James Altgens, also standing on the south side of Elm Street and to the left of Kennedy at the time of the head shot, testified: "There was flesh particles that flew out of the side of his head in my direction from where I was standing, so much that it indicated to me that the shot came out of the left side of head."

And Dr. Robert McClelland of Parkland, who attended the President, wrote a report dated November 22nd, 1963 at 4:45 p.m. it said: "The cause of death was due to massive head and brain injury from a gunshot wound of the left temple."

What all of this points to, however, is a direction away from the Commission’s basic assumption that all of the shots were fired from the sixth-floor window of the Texas School Book Depository, Any evidence which did that was eventually discarded by the Commission and, for the most part, left unexplained or held to be "inconclusive."

That is what happened to all of the evidence related to the President’s fatal head hit which contradicted the Commission’s final conclusions. Yet all of this evidence, besides having the basic characteristics of being contrary to the Commissioner’s prima facile case against Oswald, also possessed another common indicator: If all pointed to the grassy knoll area as a possible direction from which the shot could have come.

The grassy knoll area, with its colonnade, trees, bushes and picket fence, was to the right front of the passing Presidential motorcade. A bullet from that direction would conform to all the medical evidence and Kennedy’s reaction to a hit as observed in the Zapruder films. It would also be consistent with the fact that the only persons splattered with blood outside the Presidential limousine were two Dallas motorcycle policemen riding to the left rear of it. It would also explain the wounding of James Tague.

Tague, who had gotten out of his car to watch the passing motorcade, was standing across from the grassy knoll and across the grassy plaza south of Elm Street. He was in a position between Commerce and Main Streets and, it was later determined, some 260 feet from the point of the President’s fatal head hit. Just as the President’s car went by and the shots rang out, Tague was wounded on the cheek. The Commission later said it was by a fragment of a bullet which glanced up from the south curb of Main Street. It did not explain how a fragment from the head hit could travel 260 feet with enough force to bounce off a curb and inflict a wound. An analysis of where it supposedly hit on the curb showed only traces of lead and antimony, no copper.

Specter says evidence concerning the Tague hit is "inconclusive." Of course it is. If it were conclusive there would immediately emerge a fourth shot — and another gunman firing from the grassy knoll area.

The majority of witnesses with an opinion about the direction of the shots thought the shots came from the grassy knoll area. All eight witnesses standing across the street from the knoll thought they came from the knoll. Nine of ten witnesses standing between the knoll and the motorcade thought the shots emanated from directly behind them — and this included amateur photographer Abraham Zapruder. Six out of seven witnesses standing on the railroad overpass, when questioned about the shots, said they came from the grassy knoll — and five out of this six said they had also seen smoke rise from the knoll. One, S.M. Holland, a signal supervisor, testified: "I immediately ran around to where I could see behind the arcade and did not see anyone running from there. But the puff of smoke I saw definitely came from behind the arcade to the trees."

Immediately after the shooting, everyone’s attention was focused on the grassy knoll, even before it shifted to the Depository. Signal supervisor Holland, one of the first to check back there, noticed nothing unusual except a lot of footprints in the mud around a station wagon and sedan. The tracks led no where. "I imagine it would have been a hundred tracks just in that one location," he said. He didn’t think much about it at the time "because there was so many people out there, and there was law enforcement officers and I thought, well, if there is anything to that they would pick that up."

Last month, a UPI report quoted Holland as saying, "I’ve often wondered if a man could have climbed into the trunk of that car and pulled the lid shut on himself, then someone else have driven it away later."

There was, however, another strange occurrence on the knoll after the shooting.

This is from the testimony of Seymour Weitzman, a Dallas deputy constable, being questioned by Commission counsel Joseph Ball:

Mr. Weitzman: I immediately ran toward the President’s car. Of course, it was speeding away and somebody said the shots or the firecrackers, whatever it was at that time, we still didn’t know the President was shot, came from the wall. I immediately scaled that wall.
Mr. Ball: What is the location of that wall?
Mr. Weitzman: It would be between the railroad overpass and — what do you call it — the monument section? …
Mr. Ball: What did you notice in the railroad yards?
Mr. Weitzman: We noticed numerous kinds of footprints that did not make sense because they were going different directions. Mr. Ball: Were there other people there besides you?
Mr. Weitzman: Yes, sir; other officers, Secret Service as well.

And this from the testimony of Dallas patrolman Joe Marshall Smith, taken by Commission counsel Wesley Liebeler:

Mr. Liebeler: You proceeded up to an area immediately behind the concrete structure here . . . is that right?
Mr. Smith: I was checking all the bushes and I checked all the cars in the parking lot.
Mr. Liebeler: There is a parking lot behind this grassy area back from Elm Street toward the railroad tracks, and you went down to the parking lot and looked around?
Mr. Smith: Yes, sir; I checked all the cars. I looked into all the cars and checked around the bushes. Of course, I alone. There was some sheriff with me, and I one Secret Service man got there.

I got to make this statement too. I felt awfully silly, but the shot and this woman (screaming ‘They are shooting the President from the bushes’) I pulled my pistol from my holster, and I thought, this is silly, I know who I am looking for, and I put it back. Just as I did he showed me that he was a Service agent.

Mr. Liebeler: Did you accost this man?
Mr. Smith: Well, he saw coming with my pistol and away he showed me who he
Mr. Liebeler: Do you remember who it was?
Mr. Smith: No, sir, I don’t.

Thus, two reliable witnesses, enforcement officers, testified to Commission that they saw Secret Service men on the grassy knoll  immediately after the shooting.

Yet in the National Archives is a Secret Service report which says:
"All the Secret Service agents assigned to the motorcade stayed with the motorcade all the way to the hospital. None remained at the scene shooting …"