Not in Your Lifetime: The Defining Book on the J.F.K. Assassination by Anthony Summers Page B
Authors: Anthony Summers
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vital question. Which of the shots actually hit the President?
If the only comprehensive visual record of the Kennedy assassination had been shown on television on November 22, 1963, most people in the United States would have gone to bed that nightcertain that their President had been shot from the front and only perhaps—by an earlier shot—from behind. The general public was not shown the full Zapruder film until more than a decade later. They were, within days, given a verbal description of the footage on CBS television. The narrator was Dan Rather, then a junior television correspondent, who had been permitted to view the film. Rather said that at the fatal headshot the President “fell forward with considerable violence [author’s emphasis].” He omitted to say what is in fact mercilessly obvious from any alert viewing of the film. It is manifestly clear that the President jerked backward at the moment of the shot that visibly exploded his head.
Members and staff of the Warren Commission did see the Zapruder film, yet nowhere in its report is the backward motion mentioned. Still frames from the film were published in the Warren Commission volumes, but with the two frames following the headshot printed in reverse order—supposedly the result of a printing error at the FBI—which did nothing for clarity. The first impression of the ordinary person viewing the film today, however, is that the President was knocked backward by a bullet originating in front of him, from the direction of a sniper on the grassy knoll.
The pros and cons on the evidence for a shot from the front have long been argued to and fro. Some noted gory details, which seemed to reinforce the thesis of a hit from the front. Both motorcycle officers riding to the left rear of the President were splattered with blood and brain coming toward them. Officer Hargis, only a few feet from Mrs. Kennedy, said later that he had been struck with such force by the brain matter that for a moment he thought he himself had been hit. Officer B. J. Martin, who rode to Hargis’s left, later testified that he found blood and flesh on his motorcycle windshield, on the left side of hishelmet, and on the left shoulder of his uniform jacket.
A student, Billy Harper, was later to pick up a large piece of the President’s skull in the street, at a point more than ten feet to the rear of the car’s position at the time of the fatal shot. The evidence is that the human debris, including other skull fragments, was driven backward. Some researchers, making light of the fact that people in the front of the car were also “covered with brain tissue,” see this as further evidence of a hit by a knoll gunman.
In 1979, the Assassinations Committee said this was not so. On all the evidence, it thought that only two of the four shots—almost certainly fired by a gun in the sixth-floor corner window of the Book Depository, to the rear—found their human targets. The two other shots, one from the Depository, the other from the grassy knoll, missed.
How to account then for the President’s lurch backward in the Zapruder film? A wound ballistics expert told the Committee he thought it reflected “a neuromuscular reaction … mechanical stimulation of the motor nerves of the President.” The Committee’s medical panel, with one doctor dissenting, supported the thesis that the backward movement was either “a neurological response to the massive brain damage” or a “propulsive” phenomenon, sometimes known as “the jet effect.”
Studies of the X-rays and photographs convinced the doctors that the bullet had entered in the upper part of the skull and exited from the right front. They agreed that the rear wound was “a typical entrance wound.” In spite of the fact that the brain had not been fully sectioned, as the panel would have preferred, existing pictures of it may be thought to support the notion that the headshot was fired from behind.
The Committee was
If the only comprehensive visual record of the Kennedy assassination had been shown on television on November 22, 1963, most people in the United States would have gone to bed that nightcertain that their President had been shot from the front and only perhaps—by an earlier shot—from behind. The general public was not shown the full Zapruder film until more than a decade later. They were, within days, given a verbal description of the footage on CBS television. The narrator was Dan Rather, then a junior television correspondent, who had been permitted to view the film. Rather said that at the fatal headshot the President “fell forward with considerable violence [author’s emphasis].” He omitted to say what is in fact mercilessly obvious from any alert viewing of the film. It is manifestly clear that the President jerked backward at the moment of the shot that visibly exploded his head.
Members and staff of the Warren Commission did see the Zapruder film, yet nowhere in its report is the backward motion mentioned. Still frames from the film were published in the Warren Commission volumes, but with the two frames following the headshot printed in reverse order—supposedly the result of a printing error at the FBI—which did nothing for clarity. The first impression of the ordinary person viewing the film today, however, is that the President was knocked backward by a bullet originating in front of him, from the direction of a sniper on the grassy knoll.
The pros and cons on the evidence for a shot from the front have long been argued to and fro. Some noted gory details, which seemed to reinforce the thesis of a hit from the front. Both motorcycle officers riding to the left rear of the President were splattered with blood and brain coming toward them. Officer Hargis, only a few feet from Mrs. Kennedy, said later that he had been struck with such force by the brain matter that for a moment he thought he himself had been hit. Officer B. J. Martin, who rode to Hargis’s left, later testified that he found blood and flesh on his motorcycle windshield, on the left side of hishelmet, and on the left shoulder of his uniform jacket.
A student, Billy Harper, was later to pick up a large piece of the President’s skull in the street, at a point more than ten feet to the rear of the car’s position at the time of the fatal shot. The evidence is that the human debris, including other skull fragments, was driven backward. Some researchers, making light of the fact that people in the front of the car were also “covered with brain tissue,” see this as further evidence of a hit by a knoll gunman.
In 1979, the Assassinations Committee said this was not so. On all the evidence, it thought that only two of the four shots—almost certainly fired by a gun in the sixth-floor corner window of the Book Depository, to the rear—found their human targets. The two other shots, one from the Depository, the other from the grassy knoll, missed.
How to account then for the President’s lurch backward in the Zapruder film? A wound ballistics expert told the Committee he thought it reflected “a neuromuscular reaction … mechanical stimulation of the motor nerves of the President.” The Committee’s medical panel, with one doctor dissenting, supported the thesis that the backward movement was either “a neurological response to the massive brain damage” or a “propulsive” phenomenon, sometimes known as “the jet effect.”
Studies of the X-rays and photographs convinced the doctors that the bullet had entered in the upper part of the skull and exited from the right front. They agreed that the rear wound was “a typical entrance wound.” In spite of the fact that the brain had not been fully sectioned, as the panel would have preferred, existing pictures of it may be thought to support the notion that the headshot was fired from behind.
The Committee was
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