Crossfire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy (67 page)

I am not sure, but I don't-there had been some question about that, but
the reason I don't think that-this may differ with someone else, but I
am going to tell you what I know . . . After I arrived, one of the
officers asked me if I would like to have the building sealed and I told
him I would.

Recall that Ed Hoffman was able to drive from Stemmons Freeway to
the railroad yards behind the Depository, circle the area, and leave unchallenged.

The point here is that there was absolutely no effective containment of
the crime scene or of the Depository for at least ten minutes-and perhaps
as much as twenty-eight minutes-after the shooting.

Officially it has been said that within an hour of the assassination, there
was a roll call at the Texas School Book Depository. Employee Lee
Harvey Oswald was the only person missing and authorities immediately
began a search for him. Like so much other information in this case, this
story is simply untrue.

To begin with, most Depository employees were outside viewing the
motorcade at the time of the shooting and were prevented from returning to
work by police. During the first roll call, dozens of Depository employees
were missing. By the time it was determined that Oswald was gone-about
2:30 P.M.-he was already in police custody.

This was confirmed in 1981 by Dallas Morning News reporter Kent
Biffle, who recalled that day in a lengthy article based on his notes of that
day. Biffle wrote:

... only two of us [reporters] had arrived at the ambush building
[the Depository] by this point. . . . Getting in was no problem. I just
hid my press badge . . . and went in with the first wave of cops... .
Hours dragged by. The building superintendent showed up with some
papers in his hand. I listened as he told detectives about Lee Oswald
failing to show up at a roll call. My impression is that there was an
earlier roll call that had been inconclusive because several employees
were missing. This time, however, all were accounted for except Oswald.
I jotted down the Oswald information.... Neither the police in the
building nor the superintendent knew that Oswald already was under
arrest.

In the confusion following the assassination, there was ample opportunity for conspirators to escape and for vital evidence to be eliminated.

One such incident occurred minutes after the shooting on the south side
of Elm Street. Dallas policeman J. W. Foster, from his vantage point on
top of the Triple Underpass, saw a bullet strike the grass on the south side
of Elm near a manhole cover. He reported this to a superior officer and
was told to guard the area. Photographs taken that day show both Foster
and Deputy Sheriff Walthers standing over the manhole cover.

Newsmen and spectators were kept at a distance and told that evidence-a
bullet-was embedded in the grass inches from the manhole cover. News
cameraman Harry Cabluck photographed the scene and recalled seeing
more than one gouge in the ground. He, too, was told that a bullet had
struck there. However, Cabluck said he took the photographs hours after
the assassination and never actually saw a slug.

One photograph of the slug even appeared in the November 23, 1963,
edition of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, with the caption ASSASSIN'S
BULLET:

One of the rifle bullets fired by the murderer of President Kennedy lies
in the grass across Elm Street from the building in which the killer was
hiding and from where he launched his assault.

Inches from the bullet, which is circled in the newspaper photo, is the
edge of the cement manhole.

On November 24, the Dallas Times Herald reported: "Dallas Police
Lt., J. C. Day of the crime lab estimated the distance from the sixth floor
window the slayer used, to the spot where one of the bullets was recovered, at 100 yards."

Richard Dudman wrote in the December 21, 1963, issue of New Republic:

On the day the President was shot I happened to learn of a possible fifth
[bullet]. A group of police officers were examining the area at the side
of the street where the President was hit, and a police inspector told me
they had just found another bullet in the grass.

Other witnesses to the bullet marks on the south side of Elm Street were
Wayne and Edna Hartman, who were in Dallas for jury duty. After hearing
shots in Dealey Plaza, the couple "ran like the devil" down to the grassy
middle area of the plaza. Mrs. Hartman told this author:

There were not many people in this area at the time, but a policeman
was there. He pointed to some bushes near the railroad tracks on the
north side of the street and said that's where the shots came from. . . .
Then I noticed these two parallel marks on the ground that looked
like mounds made by a mole. I asked "What are these, mole hills?" and the policeman said, "Oh no, ma'am, that's where the bullets
struck the ground."

On Sunday, the Hartmans again visited Dealey Plaza but found that the
crush of people bringing memorials had obliterated the marks.

In the summer of 1964, the Hartmans contacted the FBI after learning
that the Bureau was still seeking assassination information. Mrs. Hartman
said FBI agents didn't seem too interested in what they had to say. One
agent told them the marks had been made by bone fragments from Kennedy's head, an explanation that sounded "strange" to the Hartmans.

Both Hartmans told the FBI that the bullet marks did not line up with
the Texas School Book Depository but rather with the picket fence on the
Grassy Knoll. Mrs. Hartman recently recalled:

I don't see how what we saw down there could have come from those
windows up there because they were not the right angle. So we have
always felt that it came from across the street . . . that was the angle
.. . across the street from where we stood . . . the Grassy Knoll, we've
always felt it came from there. . . . And at that time people were telling
us the bullets came from over there. There was somebody over there
shooting also. And they pointed across the street, which was south of
the Depository.

Yet in an FBI report dated July 10, 1964, agents stated:

[The Hartmans] said this gouged out hole was in line with the general
area of the Texas School Book Depository Building. [They] said some
bystander had mentioned that he believed the shots had come from the
Texas School Book Depository Building.

If one or more bullet slugs were in the grass, what happened to them`?
What role did an extra slug play in the assassination? Was this proof that at
least four shots were fired? The answers to these questions may never be
known because, officially, this bullet never existed.

Within minutes of the shooting, a sandy-haired man in a suit-this man
was identified in Dallas police chief Jesse Curry's book as an FBI agent-in
full view of both Walthers and Foster, walked up, reached down, cupped
some object in his hand, and stuck it into his left pants pocket.

The bullet was gone.

Later in 1964, when reports of this bullet reached the Warren Commission, the FBI was instructed to investigate the matter. Agents reported
back that they had examined the manhole cover and there was no sign of a
bullet striking it. There was no mention of the fact that the bullet in
question landed inches away from the manhole cover. Apparently satisfied, the Warren Commission dropped the matter.

Later on the day of the assassination, the "Stemmons Freeway" sign,
which according to some bystanders was struck by a bullet, disappeared. It
is missing in photographs made in Dealey Plaza the next day. No explanation of this disappearance has ever been brought forth.

In 1974, Richard Lester, using a metal detector, discovered a bullet
fragment on the far south side of Dealey Plaza just east of the Triple
Underpass. Two years later, Lester turned the fragment over to the FBI. It
was later studied by firearms experts of the House Select Committee on
Assassinations.

This study showed the fragment was from 6.5-millimeter ammunition
but, based on ballistics, it had not been fired through the Oswald rifle.

Rather than view this as evidence that perhaps multiple rifles were used
in the assassination, both the FBI and the Committee left the impression
that this discovery had no connection with Kennedy's death.

Yet another story of a bullet found may shed much light on how some
bullet fragments were traced to the Oswald rifle.

Dean Morgan of Lewisville (a suburb of Dallas) has told Texas researchers that in 1975 his father was working on air-conditioning equipment on the roof of the Dallas County Records Building located just
catercorner from the Texas School Book Depository. The Records Building's west side faces onto Dealey Plaza and there is a waist-high parapet
along the edge of its roof.

According to Morgan, his father discovered a 30.06-caliber shell casing
lying under a lip of roofing tar at the base of the roof's parapet on the side
facing Dealey Plaza while searching for water leaks.

The shell casing is dated 1953 and marks indicate it was manufactured
at the Twin Cities Arsenal. One side has been pitted by exposure to the
weather, indicating it lay on the roof for a long time. The casing, which
remains in Morgan's possession, has an odd crimp around its neck.

Rifle experts have explained to Morgan that this is evidence that a sabot
may have been used to fire ammunition from a 30.06 rifle. A sabot is a
plastic sleeve that allows a larger-caliber weapon to fire a smaller-caliber
slug. The results of using a lighter-weight slug include increased velocity
producing more accuracy and greater striking power. And the smaller slug
exhibits the ballistics of the weapon it was originally fired from, rather
than, in this case, the 30.06, as the sabot engages the 30.06's rifling.

In other words, assassination conspirators could have fired 6.5-millimeter
bullets from the Oswald rifle into water, recovered them, then reloaded
them into the more accurate and powerful 30.06 with the use of a sabotwhich is held in place by crimping the cartridge.

By this method, bullet fragments found in the presidential limousine
would have the ballistics of Oswald's rifle rather than the 30.06 from
which they were actually fired.

Warren Commission Exhibit 399-the nearly intact slug found at Parkland
Hospital the afternoon of the assassination-displays all the characteristics of a slug fired into nothing more solid than water. It is just such a slug that
can be reloaded and refired using a sabot, which disintegrates on firing.

But bullets were not the only evidence found later in Dealey Plaza.

The day after the assassination, a college student named Billy Harper
was taking pictures in the plaza when he found a piece of skull. It, too,
was never acknowledged by the Warren Commission.

And while evidence was disappearing from Elm Street, men were seen
fleeing the rear of the Texas School Book Depository.

Richard Can, a steelworker who saw a heavyset man on the sixth-floor
of the Depository minutes before the shooting, saw two men run
from either inside or from behind the Texas School Book Depository
minutes after the assassination.

He claimed the men got into a Nash Rambler station wagon facing north
on the west side of Houston street by the east side of the Depository. He
said the wagon left in such a hurry one of its doors was still open. He last
saw the station wagon speeding north on Houston.

After reaching ground level from his seventh-story vantage point on the
courthouse under construction, Can said he saw the same man he had seen
earlier in the Depository window. Can said the man was "in an extreme
hurry and kept looking over his shoulder" as he walked hurriedly eastward
on Commerce Street.

Carr's story was corroborated by that of James R. Worrell, Jr., who told
the Warren Commission that seconds after the shooting, he saw a man
wearing a sportcoat come out of the rear of the Depository and walk
briskly south on Houston (the direction of Carr's location). Worrell can't
be questioned further about what he saw, as he was killed in a motorcycle
accident on November 9, 1966 at age twenty-three.

Can, however, told researchers about his treatment at the hands of the
authorities. In a taped interview, Can said:

The FBI came to my house-there were two of them-and they said
they heard I witnessed the assassination and I said I did. They told me,
"If you didn't see Lee Harvey Oswald up in the School Book Depository with a rifle, you didn't witness it." I said, "Well, the man I saw
on television that they tell me is Lee Harvey Oswald was not in the
window of the School Book Depository. That's not the man." And one
of the agents said I better keep my mouth shut. He did not ask me what
I saw, he told me what I saw.

Not long after this encounter with the FBI, Carr's home was raided by
more than a dozen Dallas policemen and detectives armed with a search
warrant. Claiming they were looking for "stolen articles," they ransacked
Carr's home while holding him and his wife at gunpoint. Can and his wife
were taken to jail but later released. The day after the police raid, Can
received an anonymous phone call advising him to "get out of Texas."

Carr finally moved to Montana to avoid harassment, but there he found
dynamite in his car on one occasion and was shot at on another.

After testifying in the New Orleans Clay Shaw trial, Carr was attacked
by two men in Atlanta. Although stabbed in the back and left arm, Carr
managed to fatally shoot one of his assailants. After turning himself in,
Can was not indicted by an Atlanta grand jury.

Other witnesses also were later intimidated. Acquila Clemmons, who
saw two men at the scene of the Tippit slaying, said a man with a gun
came to her home and told her to keep quiet. Ed Hoffman, who saw two
men with a rifle behind the picket fence on the Grassy Knoll at the time of
the assassination, was warned by an FBI agent not to tell what he saw or
you might get killed."