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

THE COMMISSION WENT through great deal of effort to attempt to prove that a bullet of the velocity the Mannlicher-Carcano was capable of doing the damage it was supposed to have done. Army ballistic performed a series of tests using a variety of objects to simulate parts of Kennedy and Connally. The velocity of the bullet passing through Kennedy’s neck was determined by firing through blocks of gelatin. An anesthetized goat’s body was supposed represent Connally’s chest. Cadaver wrists were used to compare the damage done on Connally’s wrist.

"Of course," Bethesda’s Dr. Finck had testified, "to reach precise figures  we would need experiments and similar circumstances with the same ammunition at the same through two human cadavers."

In no test was a single bullet through two objects. Specter said that would have been "impossible."  So what the tests showed was that a bullet fired through a gelatin block at 2000 feet per second, lost 82 feet per second from its original velocity. Bullets fired through a goat’s chest lost 265 feet per second. Then arbitrarily adding a 50% loss of velocity to compensate for the disparity in width between Connally’s chest and the goat’s it was concluded that a bullet would
still have had enough force to cause damage similar to Connally’s wrist wound.

However, the most conclusive results of the tests was the determination that the bullet which struck Connally’s wrist was not a pristine bullet; that is, it had gone through something else first. The Commission used a good many words in its Report to explain how tests with the cadaver wrists indicated this. But not one was devoted to the question of whether or not the bullet which hit Connally’s back was a pristine bullet.

"I know we considered it fully," says Specter. "I’d have to read the Report to focus in on that precise question again, but it is probable that the characteristics of the bullet — I know this is so — the characteristics of a bullet through the neck would have lost none of the characteristics of a pristine bullet."

Experts say that infrared spectroscopy might have revealed whether or not the bullet which hit ConnaIly in the back was pristine by powder burns on his jacket or shirt. However, before Specter could get his hands on Connally’s clothes, they had been dry cleaned and laundered.

"We had a terrible time finding where his clothes were," Specter recalls. "You know what happened to his clothes? His clothes were taken off in the hospital, were put in a bag, were given to the Secret Service, were taken back and were left in somebody’s closet in Washington. Finally somebody started to look for them on Connally’s staff and they were brought back to Austin. It was decided his clothes would look good in the Texas Museum and they dry-cleaned them. We were astonished."

At any rate, it was determined that it was not a pristine bullet which smashed Connally’s right wrist. Thus it was decided that 399 must have gone through his chest first. The tests on the cadaver wrists proved that. Bullets fired at full velocity produced a wound of a different character.

And, Specter admitted, everyone of the test bullets themselves was smashed or flattened.

How then had 399 emerged unscathed?

"The way the bullet went through the Governor’s wrist," explains Specter, "it really tumbled through his wrist."

Were any tests made to determine the results of a bullet tumbling through a cadaver wrist?

"You can’t fire a bullet to make it tumble," says Specter.
Wouldn’t a tumbling bullet be more likely to be deformed than one hitting at a higher velocity on its streamlined nose?

"I think it was unusual for the bullet to come out in such perfect shape," Specter says, "but very plausible."

Did any of the test bullets come out in such shape?

"No."