Features: The Warren Commission, The Truth, and Arlen Specter: Part 2

IT IS DIFFICULT to believe that Arlen Specter didn’t take a very close look at that shirt, and that jacket at the time of the investigation and that these factors didn’t indelibly stick in his mind: Kennedy was one of the best-tailored presidents ever to occupy the White House, and if it is possible — but not probable — that he was wearing a suit jacket baggy enough to ride up five or six inches in the back when he waved his arm, it is inconceivable that a tightly-buttoned shirt could have done the same thing.

And the Zapruder films show he wasn’t waving his hand higher than the level of his forehead before he was shot.

THE COMMISSION discounted such factors. If Kennedy were shot in the hack the bullet would have come out his chest, where there was no wound, and would have struck the back of Connally’s seat, where there was no indication of damage. So the bullet had to go in higher, come out Kennedy’s throat, smash through Connally’s chest, shatter his wrist and hit his left femur.

That, says the Commission, is what exhibit 399 did.

Exhibit 399 is a copper-jacketed bullet, seemingly in excellent shape and with clearly defined rifle markings. It was positively identified as having been fired from the Mannlicher-Carcano found in the Depository.

Where 399 itself was found has become an important question. "A nearly whole bullet was found on Governor Connally’s stretcher at Parkland Hospital after the assassination," says the Commission Report. This was consistent with the contention that Connally was the last person 399 hit. If it had been found on Kennedy’s stretcher, it obviously couldn’t have passed through his body. So the Commission concluded it: was found on Connally’s stretcher.

But there was no factual basis for such a conclusion. The bullet was found by a hospital engineer Darrell Tomlinson when it fell off one of two stretchers he was adjusting which were blocking an entrance to a men’s room. The Commission Report contends that after Kennedy’s body was removed from his stretcher the linen was taken off ,and placed in a hamper and the stretcher was pushed into trauma room number 2, "a completely different location from the site where the nearly whole bullet was found,"

Edward Epstein points out in Inquest: "The fact that Kennedy’s stretcher was moved into trauma room number 2 … in no way precluded the possibility that the stretcher was later wheeled into this corridor. Since all stretchers were eventually returned to this area to be remade, the key question was: Was Kennedy’s stretcher returned before or after the bullet was found’?"

A Secret Service report had earlier said the bullet probably came from Kennedy’s stretcher, but when Specter questioned Tomlinson he said he just did not know which stretcher the bullet came from and refused to guess. It could be that neither of the stretchers which Tomlinson adjusted ever carried Kennedy or Connally, but the Commission did not track down what happened to the ones that did. It simply concluded that 399 came from Connally’s stretcher.
Exhibit 399 is a remarkable specimen, a virtually intact, unmutilated bullet. Yet the Commission said: "All the evidence indicated that the bullet found on the Governor’s stretcher could have caused all his wounds." It is difficult to believe that is the truth.

It is difficult to believe that 399 did the job it was supposed to have done and came out in the shape that it did. In fact, it appears to be exactly similar to Commission exhibit 572, which are two bullets test fired by ballistic experts from the Mannlicher-Carcano, probably into cotton or other soft substance, to get the rifling characteristics. A whole 6.S-mm bullet weighs about 160 grams. Exhibit 399 weighed 158.9.

FBI firearms expert Robert Frazier was asked whether it would have been possible for the bullet to pass through both Kennedy and Connally: "I myself don’t have any technical evidence which would permit me to say one way or the other," he said.

Even Dr. Humes, who examined x-rays of Connally’s thigh taken at Parkland Hospital and noticed the metaIIic fragments in his thigh, said, "I can’t conceive of where they came from this missile."

His associate, Dr. Finck, when asked whether 399 could have caused Connally’s wrist wound, said: "No; for the reason that there are too many [metal] fragments described in that wrist."

Specter also questioned Parkland’s Dr. Shaw about it. Dr. Shaw said he found it "difficult to believe" that the same missile could have caused all Connally’s wounds.

Another strange thing about FBI expert Frazier said there was no trace of blood or tissue on it, he did not even have to clean it for examination. It might never have been dirty or soiled.