Most Americans are unaware that, by the evening of the assassination, the FBI and the Secret Service had concluded that three shots had been fired with three hits: JFK had been hit in the back; Texas Governor John Connally had also been hit in the back; and JFK had been hit in the back of the head, killing him. There was only one shooter and no "magic bullet."
The theory that a single bullet had hit JFK in the back of his neck, passed through and exited his throat, then entered the back of John Connally to cause all of his additional wounds was only introduced after it was discovered that James Tague, a bystander, had been injured by a shot that missed. That left only two shots for seven wounds to avoid multiple assassins.
A year ago, I observed that Larry Sabato, a professor of politics at the University, had taken the absurd position that, although the Warren Commission had bungled its investigation, it had arrived at the right result: Lee Oswald was the lone assassin of our 35th president. But without offering any supporting evidence, he was in the position of accepting a conclusion with no premises.
The gross differences in the description of the wound at the back of Kennedy’s head — from Parkland, where it was the size of your fist; at Bethesda, where it took out the whole back of his head; and from the HSCA, which contracted it to a small entry at the top of his head — by itself show that a cover-up was taking place. But the proof of conspiracy is actually even simpler than that.
Merely by determining where JFK was hit in the back, we can prove that he was killed by a conspiracy. We have the jacket and the shirt he was wearing, which have holes about 5.5" below the collar, just to the right of the spinal column. A wound was identified on the official autopsy diagram from Bethesda at that same location.
We have an FBI sketch showing that the wound to the back was lower than the wound to the throat and the death certificate by JFK's personal physician, who stated he had been killed by a wound to the head but that there was a second wound to the back at the level of the third thoracic vertebra, the same location.
We have re-enactment photographs where the stand-in for JFK has a small patch on the back of his head but a larger one on his jacket, at that same location. And we have Arlen Specter, a junior counsel for the Commission, using a pointer to demonstrate the trajectory the "magic bullet" would have had to have taken.
Below his hand several inches, however, is the large patch on the back, which means that a photograph intended to illustrate the theory actually refutes it. And we have the mortician's summary of the wounds, which describes a wound to the back five to six inches below the shoulder.
The wound was shallow and only entered about as far as the second knuckle of your little finger. But if JFK was not hit in the back of the neck, then the "magic bullet" theory cannot be true and the wounds to his throat and to Connally have to be accounted for on the basis of other shots and other shooters.
David W. Mantik, the leading expert on the medical evidence in this case, took a patient with similar chest and neck dimensions and created a CAT scan. He then plotted the official trajectory and discovered that it is anatomically impossible because cervical vertebrae intervene.
It may sound surprising to you, since there have been so many documentaries that claim to show the official trajectory was possible, including ABC and other channels. But what you did not notice is that, while they model the muscles of the neck, they do not include the cervical vertebrae.
Even Michael Baden, the former chief medical examiner for the City of New York and the head of the HSCA medical panel when it re-investigated the case in 1977-78, observed that if the "magic bullet" theory is false, then there had to have been at least six shots from three different directions.
And the "magic bullet" theory is not only false and provably false but is not even anatomically possible. You don't have to take my word for it. Just download my Cambridge presentation, "Reasoning about Assassinations," which I published in an international, peer-reviewed journal.
In my article "Truth or conspiracy?" I cited this study and made the points about the changes in the description of the wound to the back of JFK's head. I wrote to Professor Sabato and asked him about it, only to receive a reply from an assistant that he admired my research but was too busy with interviews to respond.
William Colby, former director of the CIA, allegedly observed that the agency owns everyone of significance in the major media. Larry Sabato is someone of significance in the major media. It would be reassuring for him to come clean about JFK and let the students, faculty and staff of Mr. Jefferson's University know that he is on the up-and-up.
James Fetzer has published 29 books, including “Assassination Science” (1998), “Murder in Dealey Plaza” (2000) and “The Great Zapruder Film Hoax” (2003). He was a visiting associate professor at the University (1979-80) and a visiting professor (Spring 1985).
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