The Latest on JFK’s Assassination

A very interesting article was written by M. J. Sniffen and released by the Associated Press today. At least to me as a JFK assassination buff, I found it very interesting. It seems that the FBI had a mole on the Warren Commission who was reporting most every happening during the Commission investigation back to the highest level of the agency.

According to recently declassified papers, it seems that then Congressman Gerald Ford was keeping the FBI fully informed about all meetings, and other activities of the Commission. The part that I found most interesting was that according to the latest information, a memo written by Assistant FBI Director Cartha (Deke) DeLoach, dated Dec. 17, 1963 documented what Ford reported to DeLoach about a commission meeting held the day before.

“Two members of the commission brought up the fact that they still were not convinced that the president had been shot from the sixth-floor window of the Texas Book Depository,” DeLoach wrote. “These members failed to understand the trajectory of the slugs that killed the president. He stated he felt this point would be discussed further but, of course, would represent no problem.”

Now, all these years later and after reading almost every book on the subject, I will confess that this information does not surprise me. The Warren Commission’s report was written to fit the already decided upon conclusion – that a lone gunman – firing only three shots from the school book depository, was solely responsible for the assassination of President Kennedy.

I have no idea what really happened that day in Dallas or who did what, but I do know that the Warren Commission was simply a cover-up for something – maybe a blotched investigation by federal agencies or the Dallas Police, or perhaps government complicity in the assassination, or mistakes make by the Secret Service – who knows. Or as many people have theorized, President Johnson just did not want the investigation to show any involvement by the Soviet Union or Cuba. But, there is no doubt that the Warren Commission was a very incomplete investigation. That’s what usually happens when you are given the conclusion and the investigation was a mandate to prove that conclusion.

The one piece of evidence that was unexpected by the Commission was the Zapruder film. By the speed of the camera and frames on the film, the exact timing of the first shot to hit Kennedy and the last shot that killed him, can be calculated and no one has every been able to fire three shots from a bolt action rifle as fast as Oswald did on that day. And there is no way those three shots alone could hit Kennedy, then Connally in several places, hit the limousine in two places and also a missed shot that hit the concrete curbing on the street causing a chip of concrete to slightly wound a bystander on his cheek while he was standing next to the underpass before the motorcade even reached that area.

This is when Arlen Specter, a young attorney working for the Warren Commission, came up with the crazy “magic bullet” theory to account for one bullet hitting Kennedy making two wounds and then also making all the wounds in Connally. As we say in Texas, “that dog don’t hunt.”

I inherited from my mother, an original copy of the Commission report which I have read several times. It jumps from one witness to another – all over the place and has always left me empty with so many questions as have most of the books I have read. So, I wonder again as I have for years what really happened that day – that day that changed so much of our country.