Thoughts on the JFK assassination (1)

November 22nd, 1963.  I can remember quite clearly where I was when news of the murder of President Kennedy reached Britain.  I was in a small print-shop in South London proof-reading a galley hot off the wonderful Lino-type machine.  Through the clanking of the Heidelberg press, the stitcher and the guillotine I could just about hear the radio.

My attention was drawn to the fact that the BBC suddenly stopped the music and a sonorous voice said: “We interrupt this programme…”  Then something about a shooting in Dallas, Texas and, “President Kennedy is dead.”  It was late-enough in the day for the killing of police officer J D Tippit to be reported.  And the fact that a man had been arrested.

After all this time I don’t recall how long it was before the conspiracy theories started; without the web, there had to be a time-lag!  Within a week of the assassination opinion polls reported that some 52% of Americans believed Lee Harvey Oswald did not act alone.

Less than a year later, in September 1964, 55.5% agreed with the findings of the Warren Commission that he did act alone.  But that left over 30% firmly sticking to the conspiracy theory.  And I agreed with them.

I devoured Mark Lane’s 1966 book Rush to Judgement and engrossed myself in Oswald’s biography, the mystery of the Magic Bullet and the shooter on the grassy knoll.  But by the time I watched Oliver Stone’s JFK I found it difficult not to laugh out loud.  Even the talents of such a fine film-maker could not disguise the fact that the conspiracy theory was all bollocks.

So, what went wrong?

Well, there wasn’t a blinding flash in the night.  I wasn’t handed a suitcase stuffed full of $100 bills in a deserted parking structure.  (I wish!)  It was more a gradual process.  I stopped trying to use what was known about the assassination before, during and after the events in Dealey Plaza on November 22nd, 1993 to prove a pre-existing theory.  Instead, I took each piece of evidence in turn and examined it – as far as I could – down to a molecular level.

A few years ago, a close friend and colleague, said to me, “What about the Magic Bullet, then?”  Well, what about it?  The Magic Bullet – or Single Bullet – theory proposes that a bullet passing through the President’s neck from behind and angled from right to left could not possibly have been the same bullet that struck Governor Connally in the right shoulder.  Unless it magically changed direction in its flight between the two men.

Of course, even if the bullet had been made by Harry Potter, that in itself does not prove that President Kennedy was assassinated by the Mafia.  Or the Cubans.  Or whoever.

The answer turns out to be simple.  Most people think of a sedan travelling down a city street, two people in the front, two in the back, more-or-less at the same height.  But that wasn’t the case with the presidential limousine.  There were six people on board.  Up front were two Secret Service agents.  In the back were the President and Mrs Kennedy.  Between them, Governor and Mrs Connally were sitting on what are called “jump seats”.  Consequently, the governor was not in line and at the same height as the president; Connally was sitting lower and more inboard and when those adjustments are made, the path of the “Magic” bullet turns out to be dead straight and true.

This web page does a pretty thorough job of laying out the evidence.  But, given that it’s relatively easy to discount this theory, one has to ask why it ever became a “theory” in the first place.  Essentially, it shows the danger of starting out with a mind-set and then going out to dig up all the anomalies – or apparent anomalies – that might go some way towards proving it.

This is the difference between faith-based journalism and fact-based journalism.  More on this in subsequent posts.