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1,77 FRAME 312 1

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The mystery of the mortal wound: Kennelly, still clutching at his throat wound, is hit with explosive furl' from behind

Dallas:c riEFR: New Questions and Answers are reed spa al odd-lot the cause and booked 250 campus lee- doubters have always chosen to believe T h"assortment n s critics ant dE-o-- hires (at $780 each) inn single year. A him. Now they have beenjoined by a logues, rationalists and funtasts who have staff alumnus, who sometime CIA computer analyst, George never believed that still believes that Oswald acted alone, O'Toole, who played a tape of Oswald's alone killed John F. Kennedy and have has urged a review of the case—and now denial to a Psychological Stress Evalua- invested up to a dozen years of their lives Texas's U.S. Rep. Henry Gonzalez has tor—a device that supposedly measures in hying to disprove it. They flowered formally proposed that Congress under- and charts tension in a person's voice— first in the middle '60s, then fell into take the rehearing. and found none of the bunched-up, discouraged retreat with the collapse of The Warren verdict is indeed threaded hedge-shaped clusters of squiggles that former New Orleans D.A. 's through with unanswered questions and (momently accompany lying. In Pent- jerry-built attempt to prove their case in unresolved anomalies. What its detrac- house and in a newly published book, court. But the true disbelievers are back tors offer in its place is one or another "The Assassination Tapes," O'Toole now, more numenms and insistent than aiterreiti-re hypothesis fin tidier than the rendered his unambig • jedgment: ever, with their duce-Oswald and four- cm lllll ission's one-man, one-gun analy- "Quite clearly, Lee Harvey Oswald was assassin scenarios and their dizzying ex- sis. But their sort of tidiness has its own telling the troth." egeses of every scrap of paper and every vices. Supposition is elevated into fact; The Maws: The PSE, while gradually frame of film on the JFK shelves in the accident becomes criminal design; evi- gaining acceptance, remains controver- National Archives. And this time, in a dence is accepted on faith if it fits a sial among experts in lie-detection; nei- nation still traumutized by the crimes and conspiracy theory and rejected as MUDD- ier the FBI nor the CIA uses it, and Dr. lies of Watergate, they have found their flu:hired if it does not. The doubters, Joseph ICubis, a Fordham psychologist wides t audience yet for theirdernand that moreover, have never harmonized their, who tested it extensively for the Army, the inquest be reopened. pwn doubts about whether or not Oswald came away doubting its validity. There Their doubts, reasonable or not, have love • r m 3 remains, moreover, the powerful circum- inspired at least two dozen nonfiction sins fired how many shots or w might stantial case that Oswald was My verL• banks, four novels, three feature films, have Itlt them u to it e UAL nr th • alone or not. The only known rtfijp 1 several national conferences and a re- Mafia, or the Ceimmists or Ti-'. w..4weapon, a 1940 Matirdie er-Careano ri- cent freshet of articles in journals rang- 0 I I r. • e, was traced to him and bore his ing from Penthouse to Rolling Stone. A Still, amid the melange of fact and pa linprint; the only recovered cartridges bootleg copy of the fumed Zapruder guess, reason and imagination, there are fragments w;e11e: stile home movie of the assassination—blood, provocative questions: ur revolver that killed Dallas brain fragments and all—has played police patrohrem J.D. Tippit was in twice this spring on network TV and DID OSWALD DO IT? Oswald s possession when he was arrest- numberless limes to smaller audiences The Wee Test "I didn't shoot anybody, ed in a movie theater 80 minutes after the around the nation. A group of Old New no sir," Oswald told an interviewer at assassination. Even sonic conspiracy 1 Leftists in Cambridge, !Antis., embraced Dials police headquarters, and many theorists concede the case, and David

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Oswald's voice chart; Did the absence of stress signs amid the squiggles prove his innocence of murder ing JFK? 36 Newsweek Hoses c--;Hou 1 1-1 AV TH ! NATIONAL AFFAIRS r r I 1 "' .4 it SlIC1WS-111 sit they believe—a ng..e FRAME 321 • liming what Maid br a rifle over the top ••. ref what emild he ;i1 %Labia] wagon on the grassy knoll ahead of the President's manmade. And Groden. in the best •••• • 91P1V, ] "Blowup" teal it ion, thinks he has found twit and pussiImly Ihr17e lucre assassins in 4, 44.44:14wrii all....r.1 •• 7 the : 111117, rifle still in hand, • - ."..1/21'11' •••• S.• dimly visible thonigh smite low-hanging tree branches allow the motorcade route, the other—perhaps with backup inan- ity/0nd a refill' fill the grassy knoll. The Flaws: The. Nis "assassin." it he exists, could as easily be sighting a era as a gall. i t it is u rifle, he appears tic to have the wrong aril propped on the car 1,1•113 1. H. All rhulloo rrm.rvrd roof. Croden's "gunmen" are too galiry - . . but did a see i hit from up front drive him violently backward? even to he identified positively as hie man beings, let al , assassins, and are Belin, a Warren staff alumnus now di- to buttress its case. Jones found that accordingly regarded as dubious even recting the Rockefeller commission in- Connally's reaction was too exaggerated an g some diehard cnnspiraturia lists. quiry into the CIA, says flatly: "1 have no to be explained by the impact of the doubt that Oswald killed Kennedy." bullet; he suggests that Connally was WAS OSWALD A GOVERNMENT AGENT? WAS THERE A CONSPIRACY? reacting physiologically to his wounds. The FBI-CIA Connection: The conspiracy The Fidel Wound: With gut-wrenching literature is shot through with specula- The Superbullet: The Warren commis- clarity, Croden's blowups of the Za- tion that Oswald was an operative or at sion's one-man theory rested heavily on printer film show JFK's head snapping least an informer for one or both agen- the hypothesis that Oswald's first shot forward under the impact of a bullet that cies. which were then heavily involved struck JFK in the upper back, exited from blew away one side of his skull; then, a in frying to penetrate domestic radical his throat, tore through then Texas Gov. split-second later, his hand and body groups. The CIA links are largely suppo- 's torso and right wrist, lurch even more violently up, back and sitious, based on some striking oddities and burrowed into his left thigh. To have leftward into Jackie's arms. The in Oswald's record (the ease with which conceded that the two men were hit by doubters' theory: that Kennedy was hit he got a Marine Corps discharge, then separate shots would have been to ac- by separate shots, one from the rear and defected to Russia, then came home on a knowledge a second gun; Oswald almost one from the front, a single movie frame government loan) and some thready con- certainly could not have fired his clumsy (or one-eighteenth of a second) apart. nections with various people and places bolt-action rifle that quickly. Yet the The Flaws: The film itself shows an thought to be in the CIA's ambit. The single bullet said to have caused all this explosion of blood, brain and bone frag- FBI story had rather more body: Oswald damage came away miraculously un- ments spray in upward and forward, in fact was carrying the name and phone scathed. And ongoing studies of the suggesting a hi, from the rear. A second number of Dallas agent James Hosty in Zapruder film—most recently by Robert bullet striking Kennedy from tip front his pocket notebook, and there were Groden, 29, a New York optics expert might have been expected to produce a rumors—now often quoted as fact—that currently touring with a pirated print— comparable burst backward, but none is he was on the bureau payroll as infonn- seem to the doubters to show Kennedy visible, Physicist Jones's studies, more- ant number S-170 at $200 a month. and Connally reacting to their wounds a over, concluded that a double hit would The Flaws: The CIA connection re- half-second to one and a half seconds have required a "giant" second bullet mains speculative, pending further in- apart. The conclusion: they must have with ten times the momentum of the first quiry by the Rockefeller commission and been hit by separate guns. to drive JFK back and leftward so force- the two Congressional committees in- The Flaws: The nearly pristine condi- fully. His hypothesis: the movement was quiring into the agency's operations. The tion of what critics call Superbullet is a neuromuscular reaction to the damage FBI's Hosty insisted he had contacted indeed hard to explain; the commission's to Kennedy's brain. Oswald only as a matter of routine sur- defenders are mostly reduced to arguing The Mystery Men: The conspimtorialists veillance of a returned defector. And the that it could have survived intact be- have long been fascinated by a frame in a embellishments about his informant sta- cause it did. But the doubters are stuck second amateur film shot by ; tus and his payroll number apparently with the perplexing question of Ir, what did become of the build that hit Kennedy it it didn't strike Connally as well. And the film is at best ambiguous on the timing of their wounds. To some viewers, Connally seems to go stiff almost simultaneously with Kennedy's first visible reaction, and his right hand flies upward clutching his Stetson--reflexes that might support a single- bullet theory. Connally's major reaction to his wounds does come a half second or so later, when he begins sagging right- ward, spins and then slumps Photo play: Some conspiracy theorists heavily to his left. The commis- profess to recognize Watergate conspira- sion called this a delayed reac- tors Sturgis and Hunt (above) among the tion, and subsequent studies by three tramps in police custody near the UCLA physicist B.K. Jones tend scene of the Kennedy assassination April 28,1975 37 *4-1.: \1\16.?.. 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Blown p: Was the shadowy form muter the tree 11,pecirerinh;1,;fciol_anarzsrls,4n.mItigt,id_iogrlos ifie? leqn 11)43 ena.a. 11110,1111, 01 11 r, w• iated in a hoax, hatched in De- opinion, hi' was or was not an employee happyoutl to he carrying the passport." w ceinber 1063 by two Texas newsmen and of any intelligence agency of the United The Flaws: Such reeords are often care- a Dallas assistant D.A. who wsnected States'." If the ensuing inquiry did not go lessly made; the one that says Oswald the bureau of tapping their _phoneis much beyond Hoover's flat denial, it did Was 5 Feet 8, for instance, is accompanied one a renorterFATonzo Hu kips substantially undercut the tale that Os- by a photograph of Oswald standing recounted it, the three set out to prove wald drew down $200 a month. The against a wall grid on which his height is their LpicitMaygalinl a confereLe__ commission published an exhaustive 5 feet 9. In any olg, if there was no Lee call referring to Oswald as an informant 100-page anatomy of Oswald's finances Harvey Oswalfio is the woman who sutil_debating what his number wcu;- over his last seventeen months, during for 35 years has been claiming to he Lee S-179 or 172. Sure enough. said I I tulki which he earned $3,655 and pinched Harvey Oswald's mother? an agent materialized within a half hour every penny of it; it uncovered no evi- The Plumber Connection: A number of dropped a few oil--the-point micstions, dence that any hidden benefactor was conspiratorial i sts, notably comedian tlign__asked_saamall doubling his income under the table. , have promoted the theory heard anytlimbout a secret payroll The No-Oswald Theory: For years, var- that Watergate conspirators E. Howard nurrva d may ious conspiracy theorists have posited Hunt and may have been kins played dumb, and heard nothing the possibility that there may have been Present-011d in fact briefly dui:lined—at more of the tale until a New York news- two or even three Oswalds, one the real the assassination scene. Their "evi- paper printed Hoover's denial—before article, the tither (or others) assigned by dence" is a mesa hots of the Dallas the charge had ever reached mile. unknown conspirators to prepare weeks pullet- with three unidentified "tramps" The 'Dirty Rumor': The cainimission's and months ahead for his frame-up by in tow; the shortest oldie three leas to critics maintain that, whatever the mer- planting incriminating clues about him. some doubters like Hunt, the tallest like its, it did not pursue the agency con nee. In the new wave, Peter Dale Scott, a Sturgis. The implication: the plumbers- bons hard enough, and instead took the Berkeley medievalist and assassination to-be were somehow associated with the r6.1.6,T. FBI and CIA dent • e value. Their buff, has added an ingenious new wrin- events that bloody noonday in Dallas. _exhibit A is a late] anseript of kle: that there may have been no real The Flews: The look-alikes, on close 'FirEfki""la closed-door commission meeting in Oswald at all. One principal source of inspection, don't. The "Hunt" figure January 1964, at which staff director J. this speculation is that Oswald's seems older in 1963, when he would have Lee Rankin began unhappily: "We do height-5 feet 9 at his death—fluctuates been 45, than he does now at 56, and the have a dirty rumor [about Oswald as in various physical-examination records "Sturgis" Doppelgiinger is craggier and informant S-1791 ... and it must be over four years between 5 feet 8 and 5 fairer than his real-life incarnation. wiped out insofar as it is possible to do so feet 11. Says Scott: "I'm really intrigued by this commission." What follows is a that the only reality of Lee Harvey What the doubters have confirmed, long, unflattering debate in which the Oswald is some documents, a passport after a dozen years' labor, is that the commission wobbles indecisively be- which was used by different people. Warren inquiry was a flawed and at criti- tween offending Hoover by mounting its Who was Lee Harvey Oswald? Whoever cal moments a timid one. What they have own investigation, or merely accepting yet to provide is a satisfyin a al teniativotn his word—even on the advice of limner the official theory—a hypothesis that CIA director Allen Dulles that Hoover does not require whole squads of assas- would probably lie if it were so. They sins vanishing into thin air and whole settled on a "marriage" of the two ap- platoons of lawmen conspiring success- proaches, but critics charge they did fully over a decade and more to protect Precious little independent inquiry. them. The conspiracy theorists may, as The Flaws: The "rumor" was an insub- they claim, have raised enough reason- stantial one to start with, as the commis- able doubt to warrant reopening the case, sion staff may have sensed from the first; in a committee of Congress or some other one of the Texas lawmen who reported it open and independent forum, But it to them, in any event, was the assistant would be perilously wishful thinking to D.A. who had helped make it up. Most expect such an inquiry to lay all doubts to accounts of the meeting, moreover, un- rest—to make order of the chaos of Dallas, kindly omit a second sentence from Nov. 22, 1963, or to promulgate some Rankin's opening remarks, in which he final, symmetrical "truth" about the admonishes the commission that the death ofJohn F. Kennedy. Ira country will expect it "to try to find out —PETER GOLDMAN mar JOHN J. LINDSAY In WestrInglon the facts . [sn it] can fairly say, 'In our Superbullet: Both JFK and Connally? and bureau 'volts

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