Who Really Killed Kennedy?: 50 Years Later: Stunning New Revelations About the JFK Assassination (7 page)

The physicians examining JFK in Parkland determined the throat wound was an entrance wound and physicians at the autopsy at Bethesda
had determined the back wound was an entrance wound. That was a problem for Arlen Specter and the Warren Commission, because as we have noted, an entrance wound in the throat and an entrance wound in the back meant there had to be two shooters, one in front of the limousine and the other in back of the limousine.

Journalist Martin Agronsky interviewed Governor John Connally from his Parkland Memorial Hospital room on November 27, 1963, five days after the JFK assassination. Governor Connally insisted he was hit by the second shot, not the same shot that hit JFK:

And then we had just turned the corner [from Houston onto Elm], we heard a shot; I turned to my left—I was sitting in the jump seat. I turned to my left to look in the back seat—the President had slumped. He had said nothing. Almost simultaneously, as I turned, I was hit and I knew I had been hit badly. I knew the President had been hit and I said, “My God, they are going to kill us all.” Then there was a third shot and the President was hit again and we thought then very seriously. I had still retained consciousness but the President had slumped in Mrs. Kennedy’s lap and when he was hit the second time she said, “Oh, my God, they have killed my husband—Jack, Jack.” After the third shot, the next thing that occurred—I was conscious, the Secret Service man, of course, the chauffeur had pulled out of the line, they said, “Get out of here”; on the radios they said, “Get us to a hospital immediately” and we pulled out, of course, immediately, as fast as we could go and got to the hospital. In the space of a few seconds, it is unbelievable what can happen, Martin. We went from great joy, anticipation, wonderful crowds, wonderful throngs, to great tragedy.
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On April 21, 1964, Connally testified to the Warren Commission, telling essentially the same story—that he was hit by the second shot. Connally testified:

Governor Connally
: We had just made the turn … when I heard what I thought was a shot. I heard this noise, which I immediately took to be a rifle shot. I instinctively turned to my right because the sound appeared to come from over my right shoulder, so I turned to
look back over my right shoulder, and I saw nothing unusual except just people in the crowd, but I did catch the President in the corner of my eye, and I was interested, because once I heard the shot in my own mind I identified it as a rifle shot, and I immediately—the only thought that crossed my mind was that this is an assassination attempt.

So I looked, failing to see him, I was turning to look back over my left shoulder into the back seat, but I never got that far in my turn. I got about in the position I am now in facing you, looking a little bit to the left of center, and then I felt like somebody had hit me in the back.

Mr. Specter
: What is the best estimate that you have as to the time span between the sound of the first shot and the feeling of someone hitting you in the back, which you just described?

Governor Connally
: A very, very brief span of time. Again my trend of thought just happened to be, I suppose along this line. I immediately thought that this—that I had been shot. I knew it when I just looked down and I was covered with blood, and the thought immediately passed through my mind that there were either two or three people involved or more in this or someone was shooting with an automatic rifle. These were just thoughts that went through my mind because of the rapidity of these two, of the first shot plus the blow that I took, and I knew I had been hit, and I immediately assumed, because of the amount of blood, and, in fact, that it had obviously passed through my chest that I had probably been fatally shot.

So, I merely doubled up, and then turned to my right again and began to—I just sat there, and Mrs. Connally pulled me over to her lap. She was sitting, of course, on the jump seat, so I reclined with my head in her lap, conscious all the time, and with my eyes open; and then, of course, the third shot sounded, and I heard the shot very clearly. I heard it hit him [JFK]. I heard the shot hit something, and I assumed again—it never entered my mind that it ever hit anybody but the President. I heard it. It was a very loud noise, just that audible, very clear.
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Connally testified that he did not hear the second shot that hit him, but that he estimated he was hit approximately ten to twelve seconds after JFK was hit with the first shot. He was emphatic about the time frame, even when under cross-examination Specter repeatedly asked the same question slightly rephrased each time he asked it. “It is not conceivable to me that I could have been hit by the first bullet, and then I felt the blow from something which was obviously a bullet, which I assumed
was a bullet, and I never heard the second shot, didn’t hear it,” Connally explained to Specter. “I didn’t hear but two shots. The first shot and the third shot.”
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Connally further explained he did not know he had been hit in the left wrist and left thigh until he woke up in the hospital and saw his arm bandaged in a sling. In response to a question from Allen Dulles, Connally elaborated once again:

Governor Connally
: I turned to the right both to see, because it was an instinctive movement, because that is where the sound came from, but even more important, I thought it was a rifle shot. I immediately thought of an assassination attempt, and I turned to see if I could see the President, if he was all right. Failing to see him over my right shoulder, I turned to look over my left shoulder.

Mr. Dulles
: I see.

Governor Connally
: Into the back seat, and I never completed that turn. I got no more than substantially looking forward, a little bit to the left of forward when I got hit.
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Connally further testified that he had been familiar with the sound of a rifle shot all his life, and that he never thought the first sound he heard was a firecracker or a tire blowout. “I thought it was a rifle shot,” he insisted. “I have hunted enough to think that my perception with respect to directions is very, very good, and the shot I heard came from back over my right shoulder, which was in the direction of the School Book Depository, no question about it. I heard one other. The first and third shots came from there.”
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Connally testified he did not hear any shots from the direction of the overpass ahead of the limousine.

Nellie Connally, the governor’s wife, testified to the Warren Commission immediately following her husband. She was equally clear that Connally was hit by the second shot:

Mrs. Connally
: In fact, the receptions had been so good every place that I had showed much restraint by not mentioning something about it before.

I could resist no longer. When we got past this area [the turn from Main onto Houston] I did turn to the president and said, “Mr. President, you can’t say Dallas doesn’t love you.”

Then I don’t know how soon. It seems to me it was very soon, that I heard a noise, and not being an expert rifleman, I was not aware that it was a rifle. It was just a frightening noise, and it came from the right. I turned over my right shoulder and looked back, and saw the President as he had both hands at his neck.

Mr. Specter
: And you are indicating with your own hands, two hands crossing over gripping your own neck.

Mrs. Connally
: Yes; and it seemed to me there was—he made no utterance, no cry. I saw no blood, no anything. It was just sort of nothing, the expression on his face, and he just sort of slumped down.

Then very soon there was the second shot that hit John. As the first shot was hit, and I turned to look at the same time, I recall John saying, “Oh, no, no, no.” Then there was a second shot, and it hit John, and as he recoiled to the right, he said, “My God, they are going to kill us all.”
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Mrs. Connally explained: “I put my head down over his head so that his head and my head were right together, and all I could see, too, were the people flashing by. I didn’t look back any more.”
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The controversy over which bullet hit Connally intensified in November 1966, when
Life Magazine
arranged to have Connally inspect enlarged frames from the Zapruder film. An article entitled “A Matter of Reasonable Doubt: Amid Heightening Controversy about the Warren Report, Governor Connally Examines for ‘Life’ the Assassination Film,” published by
Life
on November 25, 1966, hit the newsstands on the third anniversary of the assassination. The multiple-page article featured on the magazine’s cover, contained a full-page photograph of Connally, shown with a magnifying glass held in both hands, bent over a light table to examine enlarged positives of six frames from the Zapruder film displayed for his examination.
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This was the first time Connally had made a public comment about the assassination since the Warren Commission presented its report to President Lyndon Johnson on September 24, 1964.

Connally identified for
Life
that he was looking over his right shoulder at frame 193 of the Zapruder film, just before the limousine went behind the highway sign. At frame 222, as the limousine pulls clear of the highway sign, Governor Connally emerges, still turned to his right. When President Kennedy can be seen, a sixth of a second later, at frame
225, President Kennedy emerges from the highway sign and it is clear he has been hit. Beginning at frame 225, Governor Connally turns his head leftward until, in 228, he faces straight ahead through frame 231, the last frame
Life
showed on a page-and-a-half spread featuring frames from the Zapruder film. “You can see my leftward movement clearly,” Connally explained to
Life
as he studied the frames. “I had turned to the right when the limousine was behind the sign. Now I’m turning back again. I know that I made that turn to the left before I was hit. You can see the grimace on the President’s face. You cannot see it in mine. There is no question about it. I haven’t been hit yet.” Connally told
Life
he believed, as best he could judge it, that the bullet hit him in frame 234, nine frames and one-half second later than the Warren Commission said he had been hit. “Having looked at frames 233 to 235,” he told
Life,
“I can begin to see myself slump in 234. The slump is very pronounced in 235. I am hunched. It looks as if my coat is pulled away from my shirt. My mouth is elongated. I don’t think there is any question that my reaction to the shot begins in this time sequence.”
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In the interview with
Life
, Nellie Connally was equally firm on her testimony. “As far as the shots go,” she explained to the magazine, “my memory is divided into four distinct events. First I heard the shot, or a strange loud noise—I’m not that expert on rifles—back behind us. Then next I turned to my right and saw the President gripping at his throat. Then I turned back toward John, and I heard the second shot that hit John.… I must have been looking right at him when it hit because I saw him recoil to the right … so you see I had time to look at the President after he was already hit, then turn and see John hit by a second shot. Then, of course, he slumped, and I reached to pull him toward me.”
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Governor Connally ended the
Life
interview by insisting he would never change his story. “They talk about the ‘one-bullet or two-bullet theory,’” he concluded, “but as far as I’m concerned, there is no ‘theory.’ There is my absolute knowledge, and Nellie’s too, that one bullet caused the President’s first wound, that an entirely separate shot struck me.” Mrs. Connally added, “No one will ever convince me otherwise.” Her husband concurred: “It’s a certainty. I’ll never change my mind.”
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It turned out exactly that way. To the end of their lives, both John Connally and his wife Nellie held to their original recollections of the tragic sequence of shots on November 22, 1963.

The Warren Commission chose to disregard the testimony of John and Nellie Connally because the single-bullet theory proposed by counsel Arlen Specter required that JFK and Connally had to have been hit by the same shot. “Governor Connally’s testimony supported the view that the first shot missed,” the Warren Commission’s final report concluded, “because he stated that he heard a shot, turned slightly to his right, and, as he started to turn back to his left, was struck by a second bullet.”
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The Commission rejected this testimony, reasoning instead that: “He [Connally] never saw the President during the shooting sequence, and it is entirely possible that he heard the missed shot and that both men were struck by the second bullet.” This directly contradicts the statement by both John and Nellie Connally that they saw JFK react to the neck wound before the shot that hit Connally in the back.

But the key phrase in the Commission’s conclusion ends up being the statement: “it is entirely possible.” In taking testimony from witnesses, Specter had pressed the medical doctors not trained in the fine points of legal testimony to answer hypothetical questions. But competent lawyers would be expected to coach their clients never to answer such questions in court. Hypothetical questions always propose a fictional possibility, or counterfactual conclusion, in which even the most outrageous outcomes typically cannot be ruled out.

Regarding Nellie Connally’s testimony, the Warren Commission grasped the Specter-postulated counter-factual as if it were proven fact. “If the same bullet struck both the President and the governor, it is entirely possible that she saw the President’s movements at the same time as she heard the second shot,” the Commission concluded, trying desperately to buttress the argument the first shot missed. “Her testimony, therefore, does not preclude the possibility of the first shot having missed.”
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Slipping by hopefully unnoticed, there is a huge logical difference between the hypothetical “does not preclude the possibility” and a statement of fact, proven by testimony and evidence.