Kennedy murder facts

In 1963, the Kennedy administration backed a coup against the government of Iraq headed by General Abdel Karim Kassem, who five years earlier had deposed the Western-allied Iraqi monarchy. The CIA helped the new Baath Party government led by Abdul Salam Arif in ridding the country of suspected leftists and Communists. In a Baathist bloodbath, the government used lists of suspected Communists and other leftists provided by the CIA, to systematically murder untold numbers of Iraq's educated elite . killings in which Saddam Hussein himself is said to have participated. The victims included hundreds of doctors, teachers, technicians, lawyers and other professionals as well as military and political figures.[34][35][36] According to an op-ed in the New York Times, the U.S. sent arms to the new regime, weapons later used against the same Kurdish insurgents the U.S. supported against Kassem and then abandoned. American and UK oil and other interests, including Mobil, Bechtel and British Petroleum, were conducting business in Iraq.

Later federal agencies such as the Assassination Records Review Board[63] criticized the autopsy on several grounds including destruction from burning of the original draft of the autopsy report and notes taken by Cmdr. James Humes at the time of the autopsy, and failure to maintain a proper chain of custody of all of the autopsy materials.[64]

Many years after the House Select Committee on Assassinations issued its report, the attorney G. Robert Blakey for the House Select Committee on Assassinations issued a statement to the news media calling into question the honesty of the CIA in its dealings with the Committee and the accuracy of the information given to it.

Response to the Dictabelt evidence

Blakey told ABC News that the conclusion that a conspiracy existed in the assassination was established by both witness testimony and acoustic evidence:

The shot from the grassy knoll is not only supported by the acoustics, which is a tape that we found of a police motorcycle broadcast back to the district station. It is corroborated by eyewitness testimony in the plaza. There were 20 people, at least, who heard a shot from the grassy knoll.

All of the Warren Commission's records were submitted to the National Archives in 1964. The unpublished portion of those records was initially sealed for 75 years (to 2039)

The 75-year rule no longer exists, The remaining Kennedy assassination related documents are scheduled to be released to the public by 201

The Kennedy autopsy photographs and X-rays were never part of the Warren Commission records and were deeded separately to the National Archives by the Kennedy family in 1966 under restricted conditions.

Several pieces of evidence and documentation are described to have been lost, cleaned, or missing from the original chain of evidence (e.g., limousine cleaned out on November 24,[94] Connally's clothing cleaned and pressed,[95] Oswald's military intelligence file destroyed in 1973,[96] Connally's Stetson hat and shirt sleeve gold cufflink missing).

More than one gunman

The Warren Commission findings and the single bullet theory are implausible according to some researchers. Oswald's rifle, through testing by the FBI, could only be fired three times within the five to eight seconds of the assassination. The Warren Commission, through eyewitnesses, determined that only three bullets were fired as well: one of the three bullets missed the vehicle entirely; one hit Kennedy and passed through Governor John Connally, and the final shot was fatal to the President. The weight of the bullet fragments taken from Connally and those remaining in his body supposedly totaled more than could have been missing from the bullet found on Connally's stretcher, known as the "pristine bullet". However, witness testimony seems to indicate that only tiny fragments, of less total mass than was missing from the bullet, were left in Connally.[3] In addition, the trajectory of the bullet, which hit Kennedy above the right shoulder blade and passed through his neck (according to the autopsy), supposedly would have had to change course to pass through Connally's chest and wrist.[4] Hence, the conclusion by some historians is that more than three shots were fired and that more than one gunman had to be involved.

Witnesses

Nellie Connally was sitting in the presidential car next to her husband, Governor John Connally. In her book From Love Field: Our Final Hours, Connally was adamant that her husband was hit by a bullet that was separate from the two that hit Kennedy.[5]

Roy Kellerman, a U.S. Secret Service Agent, testified that, "Now, in the seconds that I talked just now, a flurry of shells come into the car." Kellerman said that he saw a 5-inch diameter hole in the back right-hand side of the President.s head.[6]

Lee Bowers was operating a railroad interlocking tower, overlooking the parking lot just north of the grassy knoll and west of the Texas School Book Depository. He reported that he saw two men behind the picket fence at the top of the grassy knoll before the shooting. However, the men had moved in front of the fence by the time the motorcade went by and the shooting occurred.[7]

Thirty-five witnesses who were present at the shooting thought that shots were fired from in front of the President . from the area of the Grassy Knoll or Triple Underpass . while 56 eyewitnesses thought the shots came from the Depository, or at least in that direction, behind the President, and 5 witnesses thought that the shots came from two directions.[8]

Clint Hill, the Secret Service Agent who was sheltering the President with his body on the way to the hospital, described "The right rear portion of his head was missing. It was lying in the rear seat of the car."[9] Later, to a National Geographic documentary film crew, he described the large defect in the skull as "gaping hole above his right ear, about the size of my palm."[10]

Robert McClelland, a physician in the emergency room who observed the head wound, testified that the back right part of the head was blown out with posterior cerebral tissue and some of the cerebellar tissue was missing. The size of the back head wound, according to his description, indicated it was an exit wound, and that a second shooter from the front delivered the fatal head shot.[11]

Rose Cherami (sometimes spelled "Cheramie") was depicted in Oliver Stone's 1991 movie JFK as a "witness." Rose Cherami was a 41-year-old drug addict and prostitute who was picked up on Highway 190 near Eunice, Louisiana, on November 20, 1963 -- two days before the Kennedy assassination -- by Lt. Francis Frugé of the Louisiana State Police. Cherami told Frugé that John F. Kennedy would shortly be killed. Fruge did not believe her at first, but after some time of adamant speaking by Cherami, he came around. During her confinement, and prior to the time JFK was shot in Dallas, Cherami supposedly spoke of the impending assassination. After Jack Ruby shot Lee Harvey Oswald, Cherami reportedly claimed that she had worked for Ruby as a stripper, that she knew both Ruby and Oswald, and that the two men were "bed partners" who "had been shacking up for years." According to Lt. Frugé, Cherami declined to repeat her story to the FBI. She was killed when struck by a car on September 4, 1965, apparently while hitchhiking, near Gladewater, Texas. Among conspiracy theorists, the story has been considered quite credible since 1979, when an account by investigator Patricia Orr was published by the House Select Committee reviewing the JFK assassination (HSCA). This account was based primarily on the HSCA depositions of Francis Frugé and Victor Weiss, a doctor at the Jackson hospital.[12]

Analysis

Former U.S. Marine snipers Craig Roberts and Gunnery Sergeant Carlos Hathcock, who was the senior instructor for the U.S. Marine Corps Sniper Instructor School at Marine Corps Base Quantico in Quantico, Virginia, both said it could not be done as described by the FBI investigators. .Let me tell you what we did at Quantico,. Hathcock said. .We reconstructed the whole thing: the angle, the range, the moving target, the time limit, the obstacles, everything. I don.t know how many times we tried it, but we couldn.t duplicate what the Warren Commission said Oswald did. Now if I can.t do it, how in the world could a guy who was a non-qual on the rifle range and later only qualified 'marksman' do it?.[13]

Kennedy's death certificate located the bullet at the third thoracic vertebra . which is too low to have exited his throat.[14] Moreover, the bullet was traveling downward, since the shooter was by a sixth floor window. The autopsy cover sheet had a diagram of a body showing this same low placement at the third thoracic vertebra. The hole in back of Kennedy's shirt and jacket are also claimed to support a wound too low to be consistent with the Single Bullet Theory

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