12. THE NUMBER OF SHOTS

"Soon after the three empty cartridges were found, officials at the scene decided that three shots were fired," the Report says (R111). "Because that conclusion was widely circulated by the press," which could have learned only from the police, "the eyewitness testimony" may have been "subconsciously colored."

A less polite version was sworn to by Mrs. Jean Lollis Hill on March 24, 1964 (6H205-23). Her friend and companion, Mary Moorman, had taken a Polaroid picture of some commercial value and the pair had been rushed to the sheriff's office where they were, according to her story, s kept under involuntary restraint for several hours. During this time the picture and the women were forcibly separated and because of its value, they were additionally concerned. Mrs Hill insisted to a Secret Service man that she had heard from four to six shots. She quoted him as replying, . . . we have three wounds, and we have three bullets, three shots is all that we are willing to say right now" (6H221).

By intention or not, this is the formula every agency has considered to the exclusion of all others from the moment Oswald was apprehended. Leaked versions of the FBI report (see Appendix) also quoted it as saying that but three shots were fired. The Commission is no exception.

It just is not possible that as unpracticed a man as Oswald, who was a poor shot as a Marine, could have fired three such fast and accurate shots, but at least there was a chance to make it seem possible he had. With any more than three shots, it clearly could not have been Oswald alone, if at all. Hence, the compulsion to reconstruct a crime in which no more than three shots were fired. With only three shots, the pretense of no conspiracy might be presented, the crime was "solved," and everybody was off the hook. With another shot, there could be no pretense of a lone Oswald and there was an unsolved crime and a conspiracy.

The Commission also decided upon three shots, and if it had not, it, too, would have had to be searching for the other rifleman or -- men and unraveling a conspiracy. Ignoring the necessity that any consideration of more than three shots necessitated at least considering another criminal, the Report on a number of occasions indicated uncertainty about the number of shots but never seriously, however. In at least two unguarded moments, it made unequivocal statements that there were three shots. In context, when the Report says "most probably" or used other such phrases, it is merely being evasive, a well fixed habit.

If the Report could not conclude with finality that there had been only three shots, it could likewise not have concluded that the assassin was Oswald alone. With less than three shots, all the shooting could not be accounted for. Whether the Report proves without any possible doubt that there could have been no more than three shots, therefore, becomes one of the most basic of all the many questions about it. If there were more than three shots, the entire Report is demolished. It now rests on the impossible assumption that such a poor marksman as Oswald could have fired three accurate shots in less than five seconds. In itself, this is an inadmissible basis for acceptance of the Report, but it has been almost universally accepted. We have already seen that the outstanding rifle experts could not duplicate this remarkable skill in shooting, even under more favorable circumstances, including a still rather than a moving target. If, however, there is any reasonable ground for believing more than three shots were fired, then the entire Report is invalid.

In diverse ways and with varying degrees of seriousness, this topic is mentioned throughout the Report. The major discussion of the subject, however, is limited to a mere 31 lines of type (R110). It is entitled "Number of Shots" and is one of the nine major sections of the third chapter, entitled "The Shots From the Texas School Book Depository." It consumes about one percent of the space in this chapter, hardly the attention its importance warrants.

In its conclusion about "The Shot That Missed," the Report drops any pretense about other possibilities and specifically refers to the "third shot," admitting it does not know which one missed. At the same time, it abandoned the possibility that "The Missed Shot" could have been a fragment of one of the other shots which it accounts for and states "three shots were fired" (R111) . Answering the "speculation and rumor" that "four or five bullets have been found," the Report declares, "The Commission believes that three shots were fired" (R641).

Where it is less positive, the Report uses these words, "The weight of the evidence indicates that there were three shots fired" (R19, 640), or "The consensus among the witnesses at the scene was that three shots were fired" (R110, 117, 641). Having thus introduced what might be described as the "voting witnesses" evaluation of evidence the Report shifts to "at least two shots" and concedes the possibility the whole bullet from the hospital (the Commission's "found" bullet) and the two fragments in the Presidential car could, in themselves, account for three bullets. In a single paragraph, the Report sums up in almost the same words it had attributed to "officials at the scene":

"The most convincing evidence relating to the number of shots was provided by the presence on the sixth floor of three spent cartridges which were demonstrated to have been fired by the same rifle that fired the bullets which caused the wounds." It is possible to footnote this quotation -- it is on page 110 -- but it is not possible to footnote the proof of it, for this proof does not exist. The Report in the next sentence admits, "it is possible the assassin carried an empty shell in the rifle and fired only two shots," but nowhere in its reconstruction does the Commission allow for the possibility that all the empty casings were distributed by hand, whether or not live bullets were fired from that window and their shells removed. Nor is there any advantage shown of having an empty shell in the weapon. It is not as immediately obvious as the disadvantages. What was the killer to do in self-defense? He had, according to the Report, a maximum of four bullets. He therefore had but one for his own protection if he began with no empties. It is preposterous enough to believe anyone would have undertaken such a venture with less than the seven bullets that the rifle would hold.

Discussing "The Shot That Missed" (Rl11), the Report allocates them this way: "One shot passed through the President's neck and then most probably passed through the Governor's body, a subsequent shot penetrated the President's head, no other shot struck any part of the automobile, and three shots were fired, it follows that one shot probably missed the car and its occupants."

If the third bullet, which the Report elsewhere freely admits did not strike the car or its occupants, did not miss the car and its occupants, it certainly is not accounted for. If the Commission is certain of a third shot, is there any necessity for the perpetual qualification, "probably?" There is proof that at least one other projectile at that time struck outside the car. The only question, which cannot be asked seriously, is whether it was a fragment. Emphasis was added to the reservation "most probably" for a similar reason. With one bullet missing the car and its occupants entirely and one bullet penetrating the President's head, exploding and disintegrating, how can the President's remaining wounds and the Governor's three wounds be accounted for unless the Commission declares without qualification that the only remaining one of its three bullets inflicted all of them?

The Report goes even further than saying "most probably." The third conclusion of Chapter I, "Summary and Conclusions," begins: "Although it is not essential to any findings of the Commission to determine just which shot hit Governor Connally, there is very persuasive evidence from the experts to indicate that the same bullet which pierced the President's throat also caused Governor Connally's wounds" (R19). The Report then grudgingly concedes that, "However, Governor Connally's testimony and certain other factors have given rise to some differences of opinion as to this probability, but there is no question in the mind of any member of the Commission that all the shots which caused the President's and Governor Connally's wounds were fired from the sixth-floor window of the Texas School Book Depository."

Having said these two things, that it makes no difference whether or not the bullet hit the President and did all the damage to the Governor and that there are "certain other factors" that have caused "differences of opinion," the Report never again considers these problems. The implication is that the difference in opinions was among the members of the Commission, but this is nowhere stated. "With the statement that there was nothing essential in its hypothesis that one bullet caused the non-fatal wound to the President and all the wounds to the Governor, the Report leaves the Commission in the impossible position of having either the President or the Governor injured by a nonexistent bullet or bullets, the other two having been already accounted for, or having to account for an additional bullet, which it does not and cannot do without admitting the entire Report is false.

Terminology also gave trouble to the Report's drafters. The President's non-fatal wound is referred to most often as a "neck" wound, but also as a "back" wound (R115), and it cannot be both. The trouble came not from lack of knowledge of the exact location of this wound, but from the major differences in the trajectories of bullets hitting in the back and the neck. Likewise with the "hospital" bullet, which the Report, without consultation with the dictionary, refers to as "found" (R79, 95, 557, 583-5, 641), with only three variations: Once it is described as "from the stretcher," once as "discovered" (R79), and twice, while still called "found," is described as "believed to have been the bullet which caused his (Governor Connally's) chest wound" only (R583).

This reconstruction leaves the Governor's wrist and thigh wounds to be accounted for by still another bullet. Aside from the count of bullets, expert testimony from medical and other authoritative witnesses labeled that impossible, with the kind of bullet allegedly used.

The room for maneuvering was further limited by the testimony of FBI expert Frazier, thus represented in the Report, "The bullet that hit President Kennedy in the back and exited through his throat most likely could not have missed both the automobile and its occupants" and it did not hit the auto (R105).

All of this, however, is based upon pure speculation, that all the bullets were: a) full-jacketed military, and b) originated only from the sixth-floor window. Neither speculation is proved or even seriously discussed; it was easier and safer to assume them. And had the Commission applied its new concept in evidence, voting witnesses, it could not have avoided concluding that at least one shot came from the area to the west of the Depository, for most people immediately ran to that area. This included virtually all of the many sheriff's deputies not on special duty who were observing the motorcade from near the corner of Elm and Houston Streets. Several witnesses saw a "puff of smoke" in that direction coinciding with a shot (19H480, 485).

Tantalizing mysteries have been woven around all the shots by the Report. The "missed" bullet, which both it and the Commission avoided as much as possible -- and, according to the leaked versions of the FBI initial report, that agency tried to avoid entirely (see Appendix) -- struck the ground at a point almost immediately known to the police.

Minutes after the assassination, Patrolman L. L. Hill radioed, "I have one guy that was possibly hit by a ricochet from the bullet off the concrete" (R116). James T. Tague had left his car at the end of Dealey Plaza opposite the Depository. He was slightly injured on the cheek and immediately reported this to Deputy Sheriff Eddy R. Walthers (7H547, 553), who was already examining the area to see if any bullets had hit the turf. Patrolman J. W. Foster, on the Triple Underpass, had seen a bullet hit the turf near a manhole cover. Other witnesses in the same location made and reported similar observations. Walthers found a place on the curb near where Tague had stood "where it appeared a bullet had hit the cement," in the words of the Report. According to Tague, "There was a mark. Quite obviously, it was a bullet, and it was very fresh" (R116).

Photographs of this spot were taken by two professional photographers who were subsequently witnesses in another connection. Tom Dillard had photographed the south face of the Book Depository Building. James R. Underwood, a television news director, had made motion pictures of the same area and had been in the motorcade.

From its own records, the Commission did not look into this until July 7, 1964, when it asked the FBI to make an investigation, which produced nothing. I discovered this entirely by accident, for there is no logical means by which to learn of it. What follows is a credit to neither the FBI nor the Commission:

Not until September 1, with its work almost done, did the Commission call back Lyndal Shaneyfelt, the FBI photographic, not ballistics, expert. Assistant Counsel Norman Redlich took a deposition from him beginning at 10:45 a.m. at the Commission's offices (15H686-702).

The previous investigation was reported in an unsigned memorandum of July 17, 1964, from the Dallas field office (21H472ff.). In it, the author politely called to the Commission's attention that the photographs in question "had been forwarded to the President's Commission by Martha Joe Stroud, Assistant United States Attorney, Dallas, Texas."

In other words, if the FBI was going to be subject to criticism for not finding what the Commission wanted, the FBI was going to have it on record that there was no need for the Commission to have delayed seeking further information.

This FBI report quoted Dillard as locating the point at which he took the picture. It was, he said, "on the south side of Main Street about twenty feet east of the triple underpass." The FBI Dallas office said, "The area of the curb from this point for a distance of ten feet in either direction was carefully checked and it was ascertained that there was no nick in the curb in the checked area, nor was any mark observed." In the concluding paragraph, repeating the above information almost word for word, the Dallas Field Office concluded, "It should be noted that, since this mark was observed on November 23, 1963, there have been numerous rains, which could have possibly washed away such a mark and also that the area is cleaned by a street cleaning machine about once a week, which would also wash away any such mark."

Bear this in mind in considering what Shaneyfelt reported. Under date of August 12, 1964, by courier service, J. Edgar Hoover presented the fruit of Shaneyfelt's investigation to Commission Counsel Rankin (21H475-7). Shaneyfelt had no trouble locating the spot. He used exactly the same raw materials the Dallas Field Office had used -- the two photographs.

What followed was all conjecture, and the most basic conjecture, supported by no evidence, was that all the shots came from the sixth-floor window. Thus, the FBI concluded that the shot would "correspond to Frame 410 in the Zapruder film . . ." and that it "went directly over the President's head" (15H699). This was long after the President received the fatal wound that was the last shot, according to the most credible witnesses.

Before supervising the removal of the curb and its transportation to the FBI in Washington on August 5, 1964, Shaneyfelt took a number of photographs, none of them with the possibility in mind that the shot could have emanated from any other source.

Perhaps the rains were light during those 10 months or the street-cleaning machines inefficient, for there remained traces of the bullet. Spectrographic examination showed the metal smears on the curb were "essentially lead with a trace of antimony." This could have come from a mutilated bullet of the type presumed to have been used in the rifle. It could have come from a bullet of another type. Or it could have come from other sources. By "mutilated" bullet is meant one that deformed after first hitting another object. In his letter, Hoover precluded a bullet such as "from Governor Connally's stretcher" (he could not bring himself to say it was "found" there) or the "bullet or bullets" represented by the jacket fragments . . . found in the Presidential limousine." He said, "It was also determined from a microscopic study that the lead object that struck the curbing causing the mark was moving in a general direction away from the Texas School Book Depository Building." Hoover did not so state, but the bullet was also "moving in a general direction away" from several other buildings, places and areas, such as the area where the puff of smoke was seen, or the building next to the Depository. If it were a fragment, he said, they did not know enough to determine whether it was caused by a fragment of a bullet striking the occupants of the Presidential limousine, such as the bullet that struck the President's head, or whether it is a fragment of a shot that may have missed the Presidential limousine."

Politely, Hoover was saying that there could not have been a fragment from any other bullet that hit an occupant of the Presidential car (21H475-7).

Even to entertain the thought that a fragment of the bullet that struck the President in the head could have gone this distance in this direction and left any kind of mark on the curb is to do violence to Euclid, whom the Commission has already left unchaste. The most cursory examination of the medical testimony and the charts drawn by the Bethesda Naval Hospital, makes it clear that a fragment could not possibly have gone in that direction without exiting the left side of the President's head. According to the Report, it had no wound there. Had it been a ricochet, there was nothing but air to deflect it. The President's injury was entirely on the right side of his head. The point of impact of this "missed" bullet was well to the left and in front of the President. The President also was not turned in such fashion as to make this possible, and the experts said that the only known fragmented bullet found, had it caused the President's head injury, dissipated its energy in the explosion. The fragments did not have enough energy left even to carry them out of the car.

But let us suppose that the Commission might subsequently want to believe that this was a fragment from the bullet that hit the President's head. The limitation of three bullets already presupposes that the fragments found in the Presidential car are from that bullet, and the Commission admits the fragments may represent more than one bullet. Even ignoring the possibility that the car fragments represent more than one bullet, the FBI spectrographic analysis (15H476) "precludes the possibility" the curb marking was made by "the bullet or bullets represented by the jacket fragments . . . found in the Presidential limousine." So, if this mark was made by a fragment, a fragment of what bullet? Not one from the car, for the Commission has allowed a maximum of two there, and the other one, according to the Report, was "found." Besides, Hoover had already eliminated that one, even if in some mysterious way it had hit the curb without deformation and been planted at the hospital.

If the superb marksman presumed to have been in that sixth-floor window of the Texas School Book Depository fired this shot, he missed by the considerable distance represented by 87 additional frames of the Zapruder film plus 260 feet.

The spectrographic analysis of the curbstone reflects the mark of one of the other types of bullets the Commission declined to consider, even though it knew -- but did not report -- they were readily available in Dallas. But spectrographic analysis was only one of the problems the Report had with its evidence, especially the scientific evidence.

Five fragments were recovered from the Presidential car. The first were not located until late at night November 22, 1963, strange under the circumstances, especially because this car was under constant control of one of the government's investigative agencies. Some of the evidence was laundered and dry-cleaned. Some was wiped away. Some was ignored. All this evidence was in the hands of representatives of the government. The most important witness was called but incompletely questioned.

Incomprehensibly, Governor Connally's clothing was cleaned at an unidentified time and by an unidentified person or persons. At Parkland Hospital, Nurse Ruth J. Standridge (6H118) testified she handed the Governor's clothing to Cliff Carter, whom she identified as an assistant to the Governor. The list of witnesses in the Report identifies Carter as an assistant to President Johnson. He never appeared before the Commission. There is a two-page affidavit from him (7H474-5) executed six months after the assassination. In it, Carter makes no mention of this clothing.

Nor is there any reason to suppose the Commission wanted him to, for in foregoing the opportunity to question him, to learn whether he had been responsible for what amounts to a destruction of evidence, or whether he had delivered the clothing to another person, who could then have been questioned, the Commission had, as unobtrusively as possible, closed the door on an essential angle of the investigation. In fact, only a telephone call to Carter was required to learn what happened to the clothing.

Of this -- which was not the only destruction or alteration of evidence -- the Report has nothing to say. Instead, it succeeds in conveying exactly the opposite of the truth by the skillful use of well selected words, "Additional information regarding the source and nature of the injuries was obtained by expert examination of the clothes worn by the two men, particularly those worn by President Kennedy . . ." (R85). There are thousands of footnotes in the Report, but on this sentence or on the entire paragraph of which it is part, not a single footnote.

Frazier testified at length and with the care that is appropriate for an FBI expert (5H59ff.). He identified the point in the President's clothing represented by the President's "neck" wound at 5⅝ inches below the top of the collar of the jacket (5H59) and at 5⅝ inches below the top of the collar on the shirt (5H60). Spectrographic analysis of the margins of these holes showed "traces of copper," proved to be foreign to the cloth. This is at least strongly indicative, if not positive proof, that the bullet making this hole was copper jacketed, and this, in turn, is indicative of the type of the bullet. But about the Governor's clothing, Frazier testified to its cleansing. For this reason, he could not identify the holes even as bullet holes, could not testify to the course of the bullet or anything about it "because of the cleaning and pressing." Frazier indicated that with the Governor's clothing, because of the large size of the holes, he might have been able to indicate whether the holes were caused by mutilated bullets (5H63-6).

With regard to all the clothing, Frazier was painstaking in his testimony. In identifying the damages to the back of the President's clothing, he went out of his way to specify, "Assuming that when I first examined . . . it was in the same condition as it was at the time the hole was made . . ." (5H60). His testimony about entry wounds was predicated upon the direction in which the fibers around the edges of the hole were bent. The indication is that the reversal of this direction was possible, such as by pushing them in the opposite direction, thereby making the conclusion the opposite of the real situation. And of the President's shirt Frazier made the same qualification, "again assuming that when I first examined the shirt it was -- it had not been altered from the condition it was in at the time the hole was made . . ." (5H61). Even more strange is the lack of testimony on this point, or of even the assurance of the Commission's counsel that the President's clothing had been under constant and careful security to preclude such tampering.

This is hardly the kind of "information" indicated in the quotation from page 85 of the Report.

Frazier's expert opinion on the damage to the sleeve of Governor Connally's coat is at least suggestive of conflict with the testimony laboriously cajoled from the Dallas doctors. The elongation of this damage, he declared, could have been caused by "a mutilated bullet having struck the garment or it could have been caused by a fold in the garment at the time the object or bullet struck" (5H64). He was not asked to speculate, as the doctors had been, that the bullet first began to tumble end over end and then, exactly as the Commission's speculation demanded, to have inexplicably stopped tumbling on exiting his wrist and to have gone only wrong-end forward in making the thigh wound.

This tampering with evidence had, above all others, one major effect upon the reconstruction of the crime, especially about the number of bullets. Once the Governor's clothes were cleaned and pressed, there was no longer the possibility of spectrographically identifying the bullets or types of bullets that caused the injuries to the President and the Governor. There was also no opportunity of spectrographically comparing the damages to the Governor's clothing to determine whether he had been struck with one or more bullets. His suit alone had four such damages.

Spectrographic analysis of the whole bullet could reveal a world of information, including not only the identity of the manufacturer, but even the batch from which it came. However, the source of the bullet had to be known. The Commission decided this with its new dimension in evidence evaluation, the "eenie-meenie-minie-moe" method. It is this bullet the Report almost invariably refers to as "found on Governor Connally's stretcher." Admitting "Tomlinson was not certain whether the bullet came from the Connally stretcher or the adjacent one," the Report just assumes it came from the Governor's and wants its assumption accepted as fact (R81). There is no evidence from which stretcher it came. Nor is there any evidence on how it got there. There is evidence that, on several occasions and for some time, this stretcher was unattended and accessible to anyone wandering through the hospital.

Darrell C. Tomlinson was senior engineer at Parkland Hospital. He was one of the early witnesses, testifying March 20, 1964 (6H128ff.). He had been sent to convert the operating-room elevator from automatic to manual control and to operate it. He found an unidentified stretcher on this elevator. This was a hospital, not an emergency or ambulance type stretcher. It was high and had wheels. The practice of the operating room was to push the stretchers into an elevator going down to the emergency room level where someone on that floor would remove them.

Tomlinson did not know where this stretcher came from (6H134). It is inferred that this was the Connally stretcher from the testimony of an orderly, R. J. Jimison (6H125-8), who helped transfer the Governor to an operating table and then put that stretcher on the elevator. To Jimison there was nothing unusual about this stretcher, and in particular he did not notice a bullet on it. When Tomlinson got on this elevator, at a time he cannot say, but some time after the arrival of the motorcade, he pushed a stretcher off the elevator, into the hall, and attended to a number of other duties involving trips with the elevator, at least one involving a time lag while waiting for a technician to get blood.

When pressed in an unsuccessful effort to get him to identify one particular stretcher -- not as the Governor's, but as the one he removed from the elevator -- Tomlinson went out of his way to make clear his belief that anything could have happened to that stretcher. "I don't know how many people went through . . . I don't know anything about what could have happened to them between the time I was gone, and I made several trips before I discovered the bullet . . ." (6H132-3). The strongest commitment Tomlinson made was that the bullet could have come from the stretcher he found in the elevator. Tomlinson even insisted he did not have personal knowledge of where the elevator stretcher came from (6H134).

When an intern or doctor went to the men's room, he pushed a stretcher blocking the door out of his way. On leaving the men's room, he left the stretcher where it then was. When Tomlinson pushed this stretcher against the wall, "I bumped the wall, and a spent cartridge or bullet rolled out that had apparently been lodged under the edge of the mat" (6H130). There is no question asked about the unusual location of the bullet, under the mattress. Instead, Tomlinson was pushed and wheedled with the sole purpose of getting him to make a positive identification of the stretcher. Tomlinson insisted he was not going to say anything that was not truthful, that being questioned by various agents as he had been and giving sworn, recorded testimony were unusual to him, and "I am going to tell you all I can, and I'm not going to tell you something I can't lay down and sleep at night with either."

This bullet, taken from the floor after having been jarred out presumably from underneath a mattress or an unidentified stretcher, is the one the Report describes as "found on Governor Connally's stretcher." The testimony makes clear it is only a presumption that either of those stretchers was the one on which the Governor had been. Both could have been in no way related to the assassination. The Commission did establish that neither had held the President.

Without regard to where in the hospital any stretchers might have been prior to the arrival of the motorcade or to what uses they had been put, there was so much confusion that the President and the Governor were entered upon the records incorrectly. These records show eight admissions during that short interval (6H150; 21H156).

It is the Commission's belief that this bullet fell out of Governor Connally's body through his trousers, which had only the one hole, the point of entry of the thigh wound; was completely undetected in the emergency room during examination, unnoticed during transportation to the operating room, undetected when the Governor was lifted off the stretcher, after he was lifted off the stretcher, and as the stretcher was rolled out of the operating room and while it was on the elevator; unnoticed after it was in the hall for some time, including by a doctor who moved it, and at some point in some mysterious way it got underneath the mattress. Also, the Report asks belief that the bullet, in making its own way out of the Governor's thigh, was able to fall uphill.

If that is not enough, this reconstruction deals with a bullet that made a single hole, a small one at the point of entrance. It penetrated about three inches into the Governor's thigh and deposited in the thighbone or femur a fragment that to this day remains there. This bullet, a little over an inch long, then wormed its way back to the hole it had made in entering and emerged far enough so that, under the right circumstances, it would be in a position to fall uphill. The exact distance of this buried fragment from the point of entry is neither stated nor approximated in the Report. It was neither asked nor volunteered in the extensive and repetitious examination of all the doctors directly and indirectly involved.

However, the Secret Service, according to Dr. Tom Shires, the orthopedic surgeon who tended this wound, prepared medical charts the doctors subsequently examined and approved after making changes where necessary (17H336). One of these charts shows the two points separated by about three inches, a distance approximately equal to the width of the ankle viewed from directly in front.

What happened to this bullet between the time it was discovered and the time it got to the FBI laboratory for analysis? It was cleaned. Not completely, not chemically cleaned; just wiped clean. By the time the Commission's photograph, Exhibit 399, was taken (17H49), the job appears to have been thoroughly performed. There seems to be no visible trace of any extraneous matter in the grooves cut into the bullet by the rifling in the barrel or in the coarse knurling at the base of the bullet, resembling cogs in a wheel. This photograph substantiates the Report 100 percent in its description of this bullet as "unmutilated." If there is the slightest mutilation by slivering or fragmentation, it is not visible, even with a magnifying glass. As reproduced, this bullet is enlarged many times, for the length in the picture is almost three times the actual length of the bullet.

The wiping of the evidence from the bullet was not complete by the time it got to the FBI's expert, Frazier, and there was still a residue that could have been subjected to analysis. This intelligence was not the product of diligent digging by the Commission. It was revealed accidentally in the course of a routine answer about what was done to prepare the bullet for spectrographic analysis. ". . . it wasn't necessary," Frazier said. "The bullet was clean." Even when counsel asked, "There was no blood or similar material on the bullet when you received it?" Frazier responded, "Not that would interfere with the examination, no, sir" (3H428-9).

In saying there was not enough blood or tissue remaining to interfere with spectrographic analysis, Frazier was admitting that enough of this foreign matter did remain for its own such analysis. Only minuscule quantities are required. The tiny amount scraped from the nose of the bullet is not visible in the picture. Enough was secured from around the edges of the tiny hole not all the way through the windshield of the Presidential car for spectrographic study. So, apparently, no one ever tested the bullet to see whether in fact it had ever been through human tissue or bone. Asked later about his reference to "blood or some other substance on the bullet . . . Is this an off- hand determination or was there a test to determine what the substance was?" Frazier replied, "No, there was no test made of the materials" (3H437). And someone went to the trouble of seeking to make this analysis impossible. None of this is in the Report. No one raised the obvious question, either.

When asked to explain some very fine lines visible on the bullet, Frazier explained that if they did not come from inside the barrel of the rifle, they could have been made by "even a piece of coarse cloth, leather . . . (which leave) . . . infinitesimal scratches which, when enlarged sufficiently, actually look like marks on the bullet."

This bullet, according to the Commission's theory, shattered the Governor's fifth rib and his wrist, and probably in the chest and certainly in the wrist, was tumbling. There were no questions to elicit information about bone markings, and no such intelligence was volunteered (3H431). The same was true of the fragments -- encrustation but no examination (3H437).

Questioning about the spectrographic analysis was characterized by an equal zeal in avoiding the fundamentally important questions. Early in the morning the day after the assassination, three small fragments were recovered from the floor of the rear portion of the Presidential car, under the jump seat. Before midnight the day of the assassination, two large fragments were recovered from the front section, one from the seat and the other from the floor, and delivered to the FBI. Comparison of the whole bullet, the front-seat fragment and the rear- floor fragments revealed only that "the lead fragments were similar." The rear and front fragments could not be identified as from the same bullet. The scrapings from the windshield were "similar in composition" to the hospital bullet; hence, to the others, although this was the only comparison asked. And when fragments from the President's head and the Governor's wrist were compared, Frazier gave the same response, only that these were similar lead. The Commission makes no effort to trace the fragment from the Governor's wrist to the hospital. It is satisfied to stop with the police, although with the fragments found at the White House, every step was meticulously detailed. Frazier would say of the wrist fragment only that it was lead. "It lacks any physical characteristics which would permit stating whether or not it actually originated from a bullet" (SH67-74).

It would thus seem that all Frazier was saying is that he could testify only that the samples he examined were lead. He was not asked whether there had been a comparison between the fragment from the Governor's wrist and the entire bullet. This would seem to have been one of the Commission's prime interests, were it to conclude that the one bullet inflicted all the injuries except the President's head wound. Frazier's wrap-up, when again asked if he could tie the fragments together, was that he could say "Only that they are similar lead composition." With "similar lead composition" already having been defined so broadly that one of the samples could not be identified as coming even from any bullet, these comparisons seem meaningless.

But Frazier had kept himself and the FBI in the clear, except for the matter of not examining the encrustations. He made clear that his function was physical examination, although in a couple of instances he drew upon the spectrographic examination, which was secondhand to him (5H68). It had been made by another FBI expert, John F. Gallagher.

Spectrographer Gallagher was finally called as a witness by the Commission in one of its last, if not in fact the very last, hearings. He appeared September 15, 1964, and his testimony is the final one in the last printed volume (15H746-52). He was asked about his spectrographic examination of the Oswald paraffin test, which the Commission did not think had any value.

But he was not asked about his spectrographic examination of the bullet or any of the fragments!

The inference is only too obvious.

Another serious question remains about the FBI spectrographic report and Frazier's "formal" report. These are "a part of the permanent record of the FBI," but not in the Commission's record (5H69), which includes a truly amazing collection of hairs, cheesecake pictures of Ruby's strippers and other trivia probably unequaled in the history of official government publications. The Commission thus is in the position of having not questioned the spectrographer, "best evidence," about his own scientific study, but instead asked another witness who had not made the study; of avoiding the proper questioning of the spectrographer; and of suppressing his study -- keeping it out of its record.

These, then, are the shots the Commission had accounted for:

One bullet, possibly of a different type than the Commission assumes all to have been, that missed;

Fragments which cannot be identified as coming from a single bullet and may, in fact, have come from different bullets (and this ignores the small fragments from the back seat and the Governor's wrist that are proved to be part of another). These are presumed to be from one bullet and from that bullet which exploded in the President's head and inflicted the fatal injury;

One more bullet which, the Commission to the contrary notwithstanding, had to have caused all the non-fatal wounds, both to the President and the Governor, else, as is clear, still another bullet would have had to be involved. This is the bullet the Commission presumes was recovered at the hospital, the bullet about which nothing is known and in the handling of which the vital evidence was destroyed, ignored or not asked for. Of this bullet the Report says, "there is very persuasive evidence from the experts to indicate" that it caused the non-fatal injuries. Precise language would have reversed some of the words, making the selection more accurate in saying the "experts" were "very persuaded," as the examinations of the doctors shows. Of this bullet the Report says, "all the evidence indicates" it caused Connally's wounds. Further, the Report quotes two Edgewood Arsenal experts (R584) as believing that, "based on the medical evidence," this one bullet did all these things.

The Commission spent hour after hour trying to establish just this, leading the doctors through speculations based upon hypotheses without end. And it is the Commission's position that, in fact, the bullet did all those things and then was recovered in the hospital. Otherwise, is there not a fourth bullet and does not the whole construction collapse?

The Commission did, in fact, get the most authoritative and definitive testimony possible on just this point. It came from the top pathologists of the Army and Navy, doctors who, among other credentials, were also experts in forensic medicine. They were Commander James J. Humes and his assistant, Commander J. Thornton Boswell, of the National Naval Medical Center, and Lieutenant-Colonel Pierre J. Finck, of the Army Medical Center. These men performed the autopsy (2H347-84).

With the bullet in question in his hands (2H375-6) and following examination of the medical records and his own autopsy, Humes pointed out the damage done, the fragments left behind, and offered his opinion that the reconstruction was impossible. The words he used were "most unlikely," "do not understand how it could have left fragments in either of these locations." When asked if this bullet "could have been the one to lodge in Governor Connally's thigh?" he declared, "I think that extremely unlikely . . . I can't conceive of where they (fragments) came from this missile." And he had it in his hands -- not a picture, the real thing.

Boswell and Finck were present and heard Humes testify. Both confirmed this testimony. When Finck was asked if he would like to "add to" or "modify" Humes's testimony about this bullet and the impossibility of its having done what the Commission attributed to it "in any way," Finck answered, "No," to both questions (2H381).

The Commission's own top medical and pathological experts, their only experts in forensic medicine, said the bullet from the hospital could not have done what it had to do to eliminate at least a fourth bullet.

The evasions, contradictions, indirections, avoidances, and all the other difficulties with which the Commission has surrounded this most crucial of all its reconstructions; the questionable hypotheses given the doctors on which to base their opinions (which amounted to speculation) of the cause of the wounds -- these and other factors make digging out what really happened unnecessarily difficult and raise the question, "Were all these things accidental?" Whether or not they were -- and there is more than here indicated -- the Commission's own best experts prove it wrong in concluding there were only three bullets fired.

Other questions remain. There is the type of bullets, including their exact chemical composition. Another intriguing item is the dent on the inside trim of the windshield of the Presidential car (16H945). Two men each are quoted as having been first to discover it: Frazier (5H70), who is put in this position by the Commission and may not actually have so claimed; and Secret Service Agent Kellerman (2H84-5), who said that five days or more following the assassination, just as the glass of the windshield was about to be removed from the frame, he examined the car. He said, "I believe I am the first to notice this . . ." Then there is the nature of this damage, which looks as though it were made by something coming from below, not from the direction of the inside of the car.

But the biggest question remaining is the one the Commission created for itself in deciding there were three shots and then attempting to make its evidence fit this theory, instead of getting the most solid evidence it could and building theories on that basis. This was not possible unless the Commission was willing to face the probability that one man alone could not and did not commit the crime.

Based exclusively upon what the Commission has revealed of what it permitted itself to learn about the number of shots, it is not possible to assume, as the Commission did as the foundation rock of its Report, that only three bullets were fired. Unless it is not possible that no more than three shots were fired, it is not possible to conclude that one man alone -- Lee Harvey Oswald or any other -- assassinated President Kennedy.

The Report begins by presuming its way down to three bullets, for as the FBI told it, the fragments in the car, even ignoring the smaller ones, could not be established as from a single bullet. On this basis alone, there is serious question about the accuracy of the Report's conclusion, for those two larger fragments could have been from two different bullets, making on that basis alone four bullets.

Add to this the incredible accounting of the history and damages caused by the misnamed "found" bullet, destroyed by the Commission's best experts, its only experts in forensic medicine, and it is not possible for reasonable people to conclude a maximum of three bullets were fired.

Now add to this the suppression by the Report of the FBI evidence and the testimony of the pathology and forensic medical experts . . .