Who Really Killed Kennedy?: 50 Years Later: Stunning New Revelations About the JFK Assassination (9 page)

We are also left with CE399, a pristine bullet that strains credibility by mysteriously appearing at Parkland Hospital and causing massive damage in two adult men without fragmenting or becoming distorted in the process. With the autopsy failing to establish a bullet path through JFK’s body connecting his back wound with his neck wound, there is no proof whatsoever that CE399 is the missile that wounded both JFK and Governor Connally.

“The reason I
knew
that Oswald could not have done it, was because
I
could not have done it.”

—Craig Roberts,
Kill Zone: A Sniper Looks at Dealey Plaza
, 1994
⁹⁵

K
EY TO DECIPHERING THE JFK ASSASSINATION
is the geography of Dealey Plaza.

In 1986, Craig Roberts, a combat veteran from Vietnam and a trained police sniper, viewed Dealey Plaza from the museum on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository. His first realization was the difficulty of the three shots the Warren Commission concluded Lee Harvey Oswald took in killing JFK. “I knew instantly that Oswald could not have done it,” Roberts wrote. “At least not alone.” Roberts’s analysis was not complicated: “Oswald could not have possibly fired
three shots in rapid succession—5.6 seconds according to the museum displays—with a worn-out military surplus Mannlicher-Carcano mounted with a cheap telescopic sight from that particular location to the kill zone I now examined in more detail on the street below.”
⁹⁶

Roberts compared Oswald, who barely qualified as a “Marksman”—the lowest of three shooting grades established by the US Marine Corps—to his own year-long experience in Vietnam where he served as a trained, combat-experienced Marine sniper. During his year in Vietnam, Roberts recalled he had “numerous occasions to line up living, breathing human beings in the crosshairs of my precision Unertl scope and squeeze the trigger of my bolt-action Winchester and send a .30 caliber match-grade round zipping down range.”
⁹⁷

Roberts concluded that acting alone, even with the precision equipment he used in Vietnam; he doubted he could duplicate the shooting feat the Warren Commission ascribed to Oswald. But in the military, single snipers are rarely used. Normally, Roberts pointed out, the smallest team would consist of two men, a sniper and a spotter who would double as security. Even in police SWAT teams, a spotter equipped with a scope or binoculars typically accompanies a marksman.

The angle of engagement from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository was entirely wrong. “The wall of the building in which the windows overlooked Dealey Plaza ran east and west,” Roberts analyzed. “By looking directly down at the best engagement angle—which was straight out the window facing south—I could see Houston Street. Houston was perpendicular to the wall and ran directly toward my window.” This was the street on which the motorcade approached Dealey Plaza and Roberts concluded it was his second choice as a zone of engagement. “My first choice was directly below the window, at a drastic bend in the street that had to be negotiated by Kennedy’s limousine. It would have to slow appreciably, almost to a stop, and when it did, the target would be presented moving at its slowest pace.”
⁹⁸
A sniper in the sixth floor of the School Book Depository at the window on the far east of the building would have a direct-on, full-body shot at the president as the
limousine wound its way down Houston Street. The sharp angle turn onto Elm meant the limousine would be virtually stopped directly below the sniper’s nest window, affording the sniper a close-range full-body shot at JFK as he sat in the back seat closest to the window.

The only other reason not to take a shot as the limo was proceeding down Houston was that from Houston, the driver of the limo had two escape routes: continuing straight past Elm onto North Houston Street or turning right at the intersection of Houston and Elm and escaping east away from the Texas School Book Depository. Once the limousine made the hard left turn from Houston onto Elm, there was no choice but to continue west along Elm until the triple underpass had been reached. Once that left-hand turn was made, an inescapable kill zone stretched from the Texas School Book Depository until the car passed the pergola monument and the picket fence along the grassy knoll, headed past the railroad yard on the right, and disappeared from sight under the triple underpass as the limo exited right onto the Stemmons Freeway. Having additional shooters positioned behind the picket fence on the grassy knoll, or in the three buildings along Houston at Elm—(1) the Dal-Tex building on Houston Street north of Elm across the street from the Texas School Book Depository; (2) the Dallas County Records Building on Houston Street south of Elm; and (3) the Dallas County Criminal Courts Buildings on Houston Street south of Elm immediately next to the Dallas County Records Building—would be the only justification for trading a straight-on full-body shot at close range for the much more difficult shot as the limo traveled through the Elm Street kill zone. The only part of JFK’s body likely to be visible from the sixth floor corner window, as the limo receded down Elm Street toward the triple underpass, was a distant shot at JFK’s back and shoulders, with the view partly blocked by a tree.

Roberts argued the last zone of engagement he would have picked was the Elm Street kill zone as the limo drove away from the Texas School Book Depository and headed west toward the grassy knoll. “Here, from what I could see, three problems arose that would influence my shots,” Roberts pointed out. “First, the target was moving away at a drastic angle to the right from the window, meaning that I would have to position my body to compete with the wall and a set of vertical water pipes on the left frame of the window to get a shot. This would be extremely difficult for a right-handed
shooter. Second, I would have to be ready to fire exactly when the target emerged past some tree branches that obscured the kill zone.”
⁹⁹

Roberts realized that in choosing the Elm Street shot, Oswald was forcing himself to deal with two difficult factors at the same time, generally appreciated only by professional snipers: the curve of the street, and the high-to-low angle formula that Roberts characterized as “a law of physics Oswald would not have known.” Imagining himself in Oswald’s position, Roberts noted that the “high-low formula,” also known as the minute-of-angle rule, demanded a sniper had to aim low at the range selected to avoid missing the target by shooting high by as much as a foot. “No one has told you that because of the effects of gravity, the bullet will not drop an appreciable amount—like it did on the rifle range which was a flat-trajectory shot.”
¹⁰⁰
What is not obvious from the Zapruder film is that Elm Street declines at approximately 3 degrees, east to west, for about a 1-foot drop per 20 linear feet. The distance from Houston Street to the triple underpass is approximately 495 feet by way of Elm and Commerce Streets. Elm Street at the triple underpass is approximately twenty-four feet lower than Elm Street at the Houston Street level.
¹⁰¹
Also not obvious from watching the Zapruder film is that Elm Street makes a pronounced S-curve as it winds toward the triple underpass, with the result that the angle of the shot from the sixth floor corner window to the back of JFK’s head was changing constantly as the limo headed west down Elm Street. By comparison, Houston Street is straight and level, without the shooting complications Elm Street involves.

Also, Roberts realized the Mannlicher-Carcano with its bolt-action complicated the use of the telescopic scope. “You wait for a few seconds as they [JFK and the limo] come into your kill zone, then raise the scope to your eye, taking a second to establish the proper eye-relief between your eyeball and that lens so that ‘half moon shadows’ don’t appear on the edge of the sight picture,” Roberts imagined himself having to advise Oswald. “After all, the crosshairs and scope have to be exactly aligned or you will miss the target entirely. And this
has
to be done for every shot.”
¹⁰²
Making the scope work with the awkward touch of the Mannlicher-Carcano bolt-action may have made the rifle more difficult to shoot and possibly even less accurate, because the weapon had a scope, than if all the shooter had to do after chambering a round was to aim along the barrel and fire.

Roberts concluded the shots the Warren Commission reported Oswald took were the farthest and most difficult he could have taken from the sixth floor corner window, given the geography of Dealey Plaza. The third, fatal headshot was the most distant of the available shots, at a range Roberts estimated somewhere between eighty and ninety yards. This is absurd considering that Oswald had a full-body shot only a few yards away when the limo came to a near stop before making the sharply angled left turn from Houston onto Elm, directly below the sniper’s window. The only more difficult shot Oswald could have taken would have been to fire an additional last shot as the limo disappeared at an accelerated rate, escaping under the triple underpass.

A sniper who knows weapons, Roberts observed one additional critical fact that made the Mannlicher-Carcano rifle Dallas Police found on the sixth floor unlikely to be involved in the shooting. “Mysteriously,” Roberts wrote, “there
is no stripper clip which should have fallen to the floor through the magazine floor plate—and the weapon could not have functioned without it!
”
¹⁰³
The Mannlicher-Carcano rifle uses a clip to load multiple rounds into the chamber; it was not designed be used as a single-shot rifle loaded without a clip. The clip for a Model 1891 6.5 mm Mannlicher-Carcano rifle holds six cartridges, and is supposed to fall out of the bottom of the magazine after the last round is chambered. When the rifle was discovered in the Texas School Book Depository, the clip was empty and one round was found in the chamber, but the clip remained in the magazine instead of falling out, as it was designed to do.

Furthermore, the Dallas Police Department found the clip in the rifle had been loaded not with original Italian ammunition, but with old surplus bullets considered highly unreliable that had been manufactured in the United States by the Western Cartridge Company decades earlier. “Of all the manually operated military rifles in use since the end of the last century, the one which has the worst reputation and that always has been viewed with approbation is probably the poor Carcano,” wrote the now-deceased Canadian firearms expert Finn Nielsen.
¹⁰⁴
Was the failure of the clip to fall out an indication Oswald was relying upon a defective weapon as his weapon of choice for assassinating the president of the United States? Or was the fact no clip was found on the floor with the three cartridge shells an indication that the weapon was planted as a decoy.
Remarkably, after finding the Mannlicher-Carcano the Dallas Police Department ran no tests on the Mannlicher-Carcano to determine if the weapon had been fired recently.

What Roberts concluded was that for an amateur like Oswald, Dealey Plaza was far too difficult a kill zone to have any reasonable chance of success. Consider the high school athlete. Of all the thousands of NCAA Division I men’s football players, only 1.6 percent make the pros; In men’s baseball, it’s only 1.3 percent that make the big leagues. Basketball has the highest percentage with 9.7 percent of NCAA Division I players going pro.
¹⁰⁵
Even if a player has the required ability, it takes a lot of practice and training to reach the highest ranks of a sport. Sure, a high school baseball player might be able to get lucky and knock a professional’s pitch out of the park once, but it is not the way to bet. The curve in all athletics to get the improvement needed to be world class is incredibly steep. Typically the transition to world class involves a transformation where the pro learns to see the game differently than the amateur. Consider the game of chess. Studies have shown chess masters truly see no more moves ahead in a chess game than beginners. The difference is that where beginners see moves, chess masters see patterns.
¹⁰⁶

Roberts’s conclusion was that the Dealey Plaza kill zone was no place for a lone amateur sniper. The easy shot from the sixth floor window as the limo came down Houston or turned the corner onto Elm would draw too much attention to the location where the shots originated. Successful sniping requires not only the ability to plan and take the shot so as to hit the target, but also the ability to take the shot undetected and to escape without being captured after the shot has been taken. As Roberts had judged, the perfect shot if the gunman were a lone shooter was as the limo turned onto Elm Street.
¹⁰⁷
Waiting until the after limo turned onto Elm made sense only if the kill zone was designed for multiple snipers, each positioned to command a particular view or angle as the limo proceeded down the decline of Elm Street, twisting as it went through the S-curve that defined Elm Street from the Book Depository to the triple underpass. The tree that blocked much of the view complicated the shot from the sixth floor window, to say nothing of the diminishing target as the car went down Elm Street away from Houston Street. If there were multiple shooters, the prime spot for the kill zone was as the car cleared the tree
just before the Stemmons Freeway sign. A little further down Elm past the Stemmons Freeway sign, a shooter on the grassy knoll behind the picket fence close to the railroad would have a close distance shot that would include JFK’s torso as well as his head. Selecting a spot behind the picket fence too near the Texas School Book Depository would have given the shooter a direct shot into the limo but at an angle that would have risked hitting Jackie Kennedy sitting in the back seat of the limo to the left of JFK. Triangulating the kill shot by positioning additional shooters behind JFK in the buildings along Houston perpendicular to Elm would afford multiple opportunities to hit the target simultaneously from the front and the back, even if all the shots from the rear of the limo were difficult at best.